Unleashing the Mac OS X Terminal for Absolute Beginners

Course details

Overview

This is a comprehensive course designed to show how to use the Terminal app in Mac OS X and many Bash shell commands, many overlap with Linux or other *nix variants.

The course currently covers the following:

• Setup and installation of tools used in this course (outside the Terminal app)
• How to navigate while in the Terminal (file and directory oriented)
• How to manage files and directories (create, edit, delete, etc)
• Temporarily elevating to admin rights when needed
• Changing permissions on files and folders
• Writing simple Bash scripts

Each one of these concepts is demonstrated in a methodological, step-by-step manner so you can follow along for easy learning.

Course Outline

Introduction provides an overview for the course.

Installation provides step-by-step instructions on how to setup Terminal and all the related tools for the course.

The Basics provides the first look at several core or foundational commands. While learn how to get around, manage files and even some simple ways to use the output of commands.

After the basics are covered, we dive into permissions related concepts by assuming admin user while we change permissions on files and folders.

Finally, we cover some more Advanced topics like writing a Bash shell script and customizing the Bash environment.

Course Features

Presentations provide audio/video training of conceptual ideas in each major area or introduction of new concepts.

Screencasts provide a video of the instructor's computer system with any actions, commands, or screens displayed and narrated. There are several hours of screencat video content -- it makes up the vast majority of the course. Any command line based screencast will include a command listing in the lecture downloads.

At the end of each section is a document lecture with a listing of commands or a brief tutorial regarding the video content covered during that section.