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Teaching Linux/Unix Basics to Microsoft Junkies?

Posted by timothy on from the what's-the-best-candy dept.

flupps asks: "I've been asked to hold a two-day crash course in a class of students that currently are studying to become MCSD certified. I'm looking for ideas how to set this up. I was thinking about starting with some general file system descriptions, where to find what files, the man pages, the tab-button, etc. After that move on to some of the daemons and just explain what they do." He's got at least one idea to start with (below), but what must-have skills or demonstrations would you add?

I also plan to set a database program in VB (one of the certificates in the MCSD suite) against a MySQL or Postresql db and show that there are free alternatives that works as well as SQL server.

What would you think could be a good addition to teach them?

This is in no way meant to be a very advanced course, but I want to show some of the excellence of *nix and why you sometimes can save time and stability and maybe make them interested and read up more by themselves afterwards.

Any suggestions very welcome.

7 of 474 comments (clear)

  1. There is no hope! by lizrd · · Score: 3, Funny
    where to find ... the tab-button, etc.

    If they can't manage that on their own, there's no hope at all.

    In a more serious note, I'd try to focus on the similaraties between cmd.exe syntax and bash/sh syntax and possibly get a bit into basic shell programming.

    --
    I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
  2. Re:the best combo IMHO by WWWWolf · · Score: 4, Funny

    Here in technical circles, cat | grep is known as useless use of cat =)

  3. Re:the best combo IMHO by Genghis+Troll · · Score: 0, Funny

    You should try : cat file | xargs --null echo | sed -e "" | caesar 26 | grep word

    That will give you an even more pompous feeling of self-satisfaction, while still doing the same thing as plain old "grep word file".

  4. Re:The Unix Philosophy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Are you a foreigner, most likely an Al Quaeda operative? I don't believe that any American could spell "pique" wrong.

  5. Crash Course by Dr.+Kinbote · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think the term "crash course" should be
    restricted to MS OS classes.

  6. A few years ago I would have said by ahde · · Score: 3, Funny

    teach them aliases, because it helps get rid of the fear of memorizing odd or complex commands. But since computer users don't even know simple commands like "dir" anymore, that's probably moot.

  7. Re:Make 'em "Think Unix" by J.+J.+Ramsey · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Jon Lasser has an excellent book which assumes you're a computer user, but new to Unix."

    Great. What's the *name* of the book?