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🐧 Linux and the command line for kids

Where am I, what is here, and how do I change it. ls, cd, cp, mv, rm, pipes and >, wildcards, grep, find, chmod, background jobs, and a shell script of your own — typed into a terminal rather than read about.

Start the Linux track

How this track is kept honest

The commands a Linux course has to teach — rm -r, chmod, mv /etc/hostname — are exactly the ones you must never hand a child a real machine to try. So the machine is a safe one and the commands are real: every message, every exit status and every permission rule is checked against real bash and real coreutils, which have to print the same bytes. A child learns the wording they will meet in a real terminal, not a paraphrase of it — and nothing they type can break anything.

No programming needed. Roughly ages 9–15, and a good first track for a Raspberry Pi.

How it starts

When you want a file, you point at it and click. There is another way in. You type what you want, and the computer does it. That is a terminal, and it is how almost every serious computer in the world is driven — the ones running websites, films, telescopes and your school.

The full Linux syllabus

8 units and 49 lessons, in the order they are played. Each unit has a page of its own with every explanation in it, the code samples and what they print, and a few questions to try.

Unit 1: The Terminal

Talking to a computer in words

  1. The Black Screen
  2. Where Am I?
  3. What Is Here?
  4. Moving Around
  5. Two Ways to Say Where
  6. Asking for Help
  7. Treasure Hunt

Unit 2: Making Things

Folders, files, copies and the delete key

  1. New Folders
  2. New Files
  3. Reading a File
  4. Copying
  5. Moving and Renaming
  6. Deleting
  7. Tidy the Desktop

Unit 3: Finding Things

Ten thousand files and no scrolling

  1. How Big Is It?
  2. Searching Inside
  3. Grep's Switches
  4. Wildcards
  5. Finding Files
  6. The Missing Homework

Unit 4: Joining Programs Up

Small tools, plugged into each other

  1. Where Output Goes
  2. The Pipe
  3. Sort and Count
  4. Cutting Columns
  5. The Other Stream
  6. The Word Counter

Unit 5: Who May Do What

Locks, keys, and the ten letters

  1. More Than One Person
  2. The Ten Letters
  3. Changing the Locks
  4. Permissions as Numbers
  5. Making It Runnable
  6. Lock the Diary

Unit 6: Programs Running

Starting, stopping, and did it work?

  1. A Program With a Number
  2. In the Background
  3. Stopping Things
  4. Did It Work?
  5. Mission Control

Unit 7: The Shell Is a Language

Variables, questions and loops

  1. Remembering Things
  2. Two Kinds of Quotes
  3. The Answer Inside
  4. Doing It to Everything
  5. Asking Questions
  6. Again and Again
  7. Four Hundred Files

Unit 8: Your Own Commands

Writing a script, and teaching the machine a new word

  1. A File Full of Commands
  2. Making It a Command
  3. Telling It Something
  4. Where Commands Live
  5. A Script Worth Keeping

Other things to learn

Start learning — units 1–2 are free