Open Source Comes to Campus/Curriculum/Saturday/CLI

The command line, packages, and dependencies

Have a general understanding of the meaning of frequently-seen paths: /usr /usr/bin /home etc.
Understand the purpose and basic use of package management tools.
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 know it came "first", before GUIs.
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.

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.
Then, tell students to do the tasks in the "Individual work" section.

Visit Six ways to quit and learn a variety of ways to quit things!
Visit http://openhatch.org/missions/ and go all the way through the "tar" training mission.

(Editor's note: In terms of assessment, this lesson's assessment is the student successfully completing the above.)