Linux & CLI Essentials: Become Comfortable in the Terminal

Learn the small set of shell concepts and commands that unlock servers, cloud systems, containers and ML environments.

The command line is not a punishment for avoiding a graphical interface. It is a composable language for operating a computer.

TipKey ideas

filesystem path shell stdin stdout stderr pipe redirect process permission environment variable

The first commands

pwd
ls -lah
cd project
mkdir results
cp input.csv backup.csv
mv old.txt new.txt
rm temporary.txt

Then learn inspection:

cat file.txt
less file.txt
head file.txt
tail file.txt
grep "ERROR" app.log

The superpower: composition

grep "ERROR" app.log | sort | uniq -c

Read it left to right:

find error lines
      ↓
sort them
      ↓
count unique occurrences

Resources

Ubuntu — Command Line for Beginners:
https://ubuntu.com/desktop/docs/en/latest/tutorial/the-linux-command-line-for-beginners/

Linux Foundation — Introduction to Linux:
https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/introduction-to-linux/

GNU Bash manual:
https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/

The Missing Semester:
https://missing.csail.mit.edu/

WarningRespect destructive commands

Before running sudo, recursive deletion, permission changes, or commands copied blindly from the web, understand what they will modify.

Next: CLI for Data Science & ML