The Terminal

You got a little taste of using the terminal in the last section, but now it's time we got literate. Expect this section to take a few hours since we will be out-sourcing work to a few different problems/tutorials across the web.

For the majority of getting you good with begging parts of Linux, we will be using the amazing class The Missing Semester by MIT. We will not be doing the entire class, only the parts that matter the most.

The Shell

You can think of the shell as the terminal you used earlier. The shell is your text interface into the computer. It allows you to do things quickly and powerfully. To become a good hacker, you must first learn how to navigate and use a shell.

To do this, we will now jump to the earlier mentioned MIT course on hacking tools. Read and do the exercises of this lesson: Topic 1: The Shell. If you do not like reading, you can also find the lecture at the top of that page. This will take some time, so come back here when you are done.

take the time to do the exercises before moving on, it will help

Shell Scripting

At this point, it should start becoming clearer that each shell has it's own scripting language that makes automation very easy. Hacking often involves repetitive tasks and doing things on a massive level from a shell. Let's learn how to use scripting (using the language) in a powerful way.

Like last time, Read and do the exercises of this lesson: Topic 2: Shell Tools This will take some time, so come back here when you are done.

Using VIM

Often, after scripting and finding your way to files in your filesystem you need to edit them. Currently, you should have no idea how to edit files in your terminal, but we are going to change that now. Hackers need to work fast, and that means writing code directly from the same interface you use to run it. The terminal is this place. To edit things fast, we use a quaint program called VIM -- it looks old and feels old, but it is very powerful.

Like earlier, Read and do the exercises of this lesson: Topic 3: Editors This will take some time, so come back here when you are done.

After this, you will be quite a powerful user.