A brief introduction to Linux

If you’re already familiar with UNIX, you can just skim or skip these topics.

You can spend a lifetime learning UNIX; I’ve worked with it since 1993 and I’m still learning something new every day. The commands in the following topics, limited to what you’ll need for the basics, barely scratch the surface.

• Directories in UNIX
• Other UNIX commands
• UNIX command-line tricks

Better UNIX references

Either of these two sites offer a good introduction to UNIX:1

• UNIX Tutorial for Beginners

• Learn UNIX

Figure 5: http://xkcd.com/456 by Randall Munroe

Footnotes

1

For the purposes of this tutorial, “Linux” and “UNIX” are the same thing. Systems administrators know that Linux and Mac OS Darwin are different varieties of UNIX, and AlmaLinux and Ubuntu are different varities of Linux. But you’re not here to be a sysadmin… at least not for today.