What should go in a modern beginner's Linux tutorial?

linux.md

If, at any time, somebody says "X is hard to remember": alias.

Always show the command in the most useful 1-3 contexts, with the most usual flags.

######Assuming Ubuntu:

basics

• opening a terminal, echo, rev, tac
• computers can do things we can't: factor 345354699
• where's my stuff? find ~/Downloads -name "*Frozen*mp4"
• what's running? ps aux | grep chromium, htop
• stopping/pausing things: ctrl+C, ctrl+D, ctrl+Z, jobs, fg
• killall firefox, xkill, kill -9 process.id.you.looked.up

more basics

• date, cal
• tr, sed (simple examples)
• w3m gawker.com #no ads = comments
• ctrl+R, ctrl+W, ctrl+A, ctrl+E, alt+F, alt+B
• ctrl+shift+V, ctrl+shift+C
• !!, !$, alt+., tab
• \n, \t
• crontab -e

not useful, but let's show the computer can do some things I can’t:

• seq 111 151 | factor
• seq 12211 12251 | factor
• seq 1225511 1225551 | factor
• how long does it take for things to get slow? seq 11111111111111111 11111111111111151 | factor

advanced basics

• sudo service status-all (mysqld, X) : background processes
• nc : open one connection, listen = interprocess communication (kernel)
• (maybe a niftier example? eg have nc factor whatever number the other side inputs?)
• history | grep find (what's the syntax for that find command again?)
• eog image.jpeg & = backgrounding
• pdftotext, OCR, …
• gedit /etc/some.config.file.rc & = backgrounding, text files let you customise your system

installing new things

• apt-cache search games
• apt-cache search games | grep chess = pipes, grep
• sudo apt-get install __ = whatever they want

the internet ≠ the WWW

• curl, httpbin.org
• ssh, ssh [email protected], ssh -i secuity.pem -c blowfish [email protected]
• curl checkip.amazonaws.com
• ping google.com = simpler message than HTTP or curl
• traceroute google.com = where the internet goes physically
• traceroute 127.0.0.1 = right here
• traceroute 10.0.0.1 = your wireless server
• traceroute 192.168.1.1
• some SimpleHTTPServer locally (nc again? echo "boo" | cat | nc -v -l 12345, then navigate to 127.0.0.1:12345 and localhost:12345)
• post a form with curl -F? = how spam works

exploring the linux filesystem

• ls /, ls /usr/bin/, ls /usr/local/bin, ls /usr/sbin/, ls /usr/bin/, ls /proc, ls /dev
• ls -R ~/.config/

installing and running stuff

• gem install bro = people can write tools for you in python, ruby, perl, as well as c—and you don't have to care which one.
• bro tar
• sudo apt-get install build-tools
• cd /opt && wget http://place.org/files/something.tar.gz && tar -xzvf something.tar.gz && cd something && ls -oh && ./configure && make && make install
• wget TTYtter.perl; ls -oh; chmod u+x TTYtter.perl; ls -oh; perl TTYtter.perl
• man sprintf = built on C

This is open-source = chaotic, sometimes anachronistic: tape archives, pseudo-tty's, \bells, ports; curses, bootloaders, nroff, alpine. Linux was written in C because it was an easy language at the time. (Even physicists could learn it.) It predates screens/monitors.

advanced & extras

• wicd-curses, ifconfig
• sed, grep, tr. Unix for poets. (And another thing computers are way better at than people.)
• pip install csvkit
• first few hg commands (init, add, commit, commit, view tree, commit, undo, un-undo, share w/ colleagues, track their changes)
• Broman's "minimal make" = idea of reproducibility
• upload static site to S3 (s3cmd)
• backup to glacier
• ELK
• ruby koans (test-driven development), @dancow tutorial on webscraping
• databases, csv's, JSON
• jq api.forecast.io
• curl quandl
• tmux / screen
• xargs
• dd, shred
• export, set
• nohup, sigint, sigkill, trap
• ctrl+shift+U, gucharmap
• https://github.com/jlevy/the-art-of-command-line

######Assuming Mac: