Learn Linux - Interactive Tutorial

Overview

This Linux terminal simulator is a guided tutorial for the commands you use every day on a server, run safely in your browser. It has a small file system with a home directory, documents, projects, configuration files, a hidden file, /etc and /var/log, so commands behave the way they would on a real machine. Six lessons build up in order. Navigation basics covers pwd, ls and cd, including ls -a for hidden files. File operations covers touch, mkdir, cp, mv and rm. Viewing and searching covers head, tail, grep, wc and find, which handle text the way the real tools do, including how a last line without a newline is counted. Permissions and ownership covers reading ls -l output and changing modes with chmod. System information covers whoami, hostname, df, free, env and the PATH variable. Pipes and redirection covers sending one command output into another and writing or appending to files. Each step checks your command and explains what it did, so you learn the habits, not only the syntax.

Try this

1. In "Navigation Basics", run ls -a in the home directory and find the hidden files.
2. In "Viewing & Searching", read the end of /var/log/syslog with tail and search a file with grep.
3. In "Pipes & Redirection", count files with ls | wc -l, then write and append to hello.txt with > and >>.

Frequently asked questions

How do I see hidden files in Linux?

Use ls -a, or ls -la for a long listing. Files and directories whose names start with a dot are hidden from a plain ls.

What is the difference between > and >> in the shell?

> redirects output to a file and replaces its contents. >> appends to the end of the file instead.

What does a pipe do?

The | operator sends the standard output of one command to the standard input of the next, for example grep error app.log | wc -l to count matching lines.