
Explore how Unix file permissions govern access for the owner, a group, and others, with examples of read, write, and execute on files and directories.
Clear your screen using the Unix clear command; options exist but are rarely needed, and you can also press control L for a quick screen clear.
Learn to paginate terminal output with the more and less commands, especially using less for paging, navigation, and searching via /, with pipe input, spacebar, return, and quit q.
Explore redirecting standard error and standard output in Unix, using find to search files, demonstrating file descriptors 0, 1, and 2, and sending output to files or /dev/null.
Learn how to compress large Unix files with gzip and bzip2, compare levels to balance speed and size, keep originals, decompress options, and on-the-fly viewing with zcat.
Explore networking fundamentals for unix systems, from how routers and DNS translate domain names to IP addresses, to testing services on port 8080 via loopback and local host.
What do C, Go, Python, Perl, Java, Node.js, Git, SSH, Docker, Kubernetes, MySQL, SQLite, iOS, MacOS, Android and SO many more programming languages, tools & platforms have in common? They were all developed on Unix-related operating systems like Linux, MacOS (yes, MacOS IS Unix too), FreeBSD & many others. That means these tools are 1st-class citizens in Unix. Virtually every modern developer will interact with some aspect of Unix in their career whether they're using Git and GitHub or deploying their web applications and services to The Cloud, Unix is nearly inescapable.
In this course, we'll teach you the basics of this amazing and powerful operating system so that you can get the most out of it and feel comfortable working with it to get useful work done. There's a reason Unix is so ubiquitous, and by the end of this course, you'll know exactly why.
What's so special about Unix? It's an operating system that was designed by programmers for programmers. It's basically a giant open development platform. Unix doesn't try to hide its programming tools away from the casual user. Those tools are all up front and center, making it easy and pleasurable to develop sophisticated software and test it out on the platform. That's why so many of the world's most popular languages and development tools have been developed on Unix over the decades.
Do you have to learn Unix to be a developer? No, of course not. But many developers are forced to interact with Unix-related technologies every day without realizing that's what they're doing. As a result, they stumble their way through cryptic-seeming commands and invocations without understanding the underlying technology and the systems and theories on which they are based. If one understands where these commands and techniques are coming from, they become much easier to master and they are much less intimidating. It is at this point that one can truly unleash the power of the tools.
Let us help you to unleash that power for yourself to take your skillset to the next level.