Open Source Comes to Campus/Curriculum/Saturday

Note well: This is just a draft; work in progress.

Linux and the command line
Pre-requisites: Have some Linuxy distro and a terminal open, or Terminal on a Mac, or GitBash on Windows.

Learning objectives: Have a general understanding of what paths mean (/usr /usr/bin /home etc.). Understand the purpose and basic use of package management tools. Understand how to "cd" and "ls" around in a terminal. Have familiarity with passing arguments to CLI programs (e.g., tar). Preferably, understand that a text terminal can display "graphical" (e.g. via ncurses) programs. Understand enough history of the command line to mknow it came "first." Have enough understanding of the command line to succeed at the rest of the day's activities. Become familiar with different ways of quitting command-line programs.

Group discussion


 * Use a photo of teletypes connected to a serious UNIX server to explain what a "terminal" means.
 * Ask people what their experiences with the command line have been so far. (If necessary, skip pieces of the discussion.)
 * With a diagram of a directory hierarchy, discuss different paths like /home and /usr.
 * Explain the concept of "PATH". Point out that "." is usually not in the path by default.
 * Split the screen into half Nautilus, half Terminal, and show how they are different views of the same thing.
 * Explain that programs like "apt-get" install software, and to demonstrate this, use apt-get on the presentation machine to install something. Demonstrate where the resulting files went with dpkg -L. (Try to include a surprise /usr/sbin program.) Try executing a binary that got installed, and point out its location. Use apt-get remove to remove it. Point out that "yum" and "port" are similar tools.

Individual work


 * Have students go through the "tar" training mission, which shows them mkdir and moving files around and tar.
 * It would be nice to have a training mission called "Six ways to quit" that showed you ^C, ^D, q (for less), :q (for vi-like), ^X (for pico-like), C-x C-c (for emacs-like)

Assessment elements


 * The "tar" training mission includes elements of running programs.
 * The "Six ways to quit" mission includes its own assessment.

Possible problems


 * Some students might already be extremely familiar with this material. It'd be nice to have some "extra credit".