Free Online Unix Training Materials

The goal of this page is to help programmers who want to become fluent Unix users, programmers, and system administrators. (Given Unix's emphasis on empowering users, sometimes it's hard to tell where the boundaries are between those three categories!)

Unix Commandline Skills

Manuals and Course Notes, listed in order of increasing skill level
- Oregon State University's "Coping with Unix: An Interactive Survival Kit" For beginners.
- Louis Taber's Online Class Notes; intros to Unix and to C; 2001. Free.
- Fortuitous Technology's Linux Fundamentals Manual (pdf) 2001. Free.
- Ohio State's Introduction to Unix 1996. Free.
- Ohio State's Unix System Administration 1996. Free.
- IBM Developerworks tutorials. The LPI Certification tutorials are said to be very good.
- Indiana University's Unix sysadmin Education Resources - links to Unix system administration resources. 1996.
- RUTE - Paul Scheer's online textbook for Linux system administrators. Covers a lot of ground, quite good. 2001. (Free for personal use; print version available in bookstores.)
- Central Queensland Univeristy's Unix System Administration online textbook and study guide - Excellent in-depth introduction to Unix tools. This is the best of the lot. 1999. Free.
Online quizzes, listed in order of increasing skill level
- European Molecular Biology Network UNIX Quiz - 12 questions. Fun.
- NCSA Digital Media Studio class from 1995: quiz 1, quiz 2. 50 questions each. For beginners.
- UCSB's "Geography 13" - how to use UNIX. 5 short quizzes. For beginners.
- Wichita State University's CIS 497C: Introduction to Unix, Fall 2001. Lectures, plus 4 quizzes with answers, 12 questions each. Intermediate.
- U of Vermont's CS2204 and CS1206 quizzes - 16 short quizzes with answers. 2001. Intermediate.
- comp.unix.shell quiz of 23 Apr 1999, with answers. Advanced.
- Indiana University's Unix sysadmin self-evaluation tests. Three quizzes, 60 questions each, requiring a fair bit of hardware knowledge. Advanced.
Unix Programming Quizzes
- My own Makefile quiz
Usenet groups - where the pros go to get help
- comp.unix.admin (google, nntp)
- comp.unix.shell (google, nntp)
Non-free tests
- Linux Professional Institute - An open consortium devoted to high-quality Linux training and testing materials; Linux tests available at many testing centers for a fee
- Brainbench.com - A for-profit company that offers high quality but quick tests online. The "Linux Administration (General)" test is still free as of August 2002, and is pretty good.
- Sun's Solaris System Administration Certification Pages - a few free sample questions, if nothing else.

Unix Programming Skills

Little Unix Programmers Group How to program in the Unix environment. Tutorials on make, gcc, gdb, etc. 2001. Free.
UMD's cmsc 214 tutorials How to program in the Unix environment. Tutorials on unix, emacs, make, etc. Free.
MTSU's Makefile tutorial 1998. Free.
UW ACM's Developing Software in UNIX Tutorial notes Covers sh, gcc, gdb, cvs, and make. 2000. Free.
UMich's gprof quickstart.
gprof internals (The original BSD gprof paper)
the Gnu gprof manual
UMich's gdb quickstart.
the Gnu gdb manual

The vi text editor

The vi editor was introduced in 1983 or so, and its antiquated user interface makes it painful to learn. So why use it? Well, believe it or not, vi is a very efficient way to edit C or C++ source code, it's installed by default on nearly all Unix and Linux systems, and it works well even when logged in via Telnet over very slow connections. You can read more about vi from the following sources. If you need a copy of vi, I recommend vim; it's free, and runs on nearly any platform, including Mac and Windows.

University of Hawaii's Mastering the VI editor (pdf) 2002
Linuxnewbie.org's "Introduction to Programming in C/C++ with Vim".
Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition, Linda Lamb & Arnold Robbins, published by O'Reilly
The vi editor and its clones, Sven Guckes
The VI Lover's Home Page -- good list of tutorials
The VIM (Vi IMproved) Home Page
vi for smarties -- eight quick lessons, two quizzes
Walter Zintz's vi tutorial (note: Walter also wrote a nice 12-question quiz which is not presently online.)
A Comparative Study of vi and Emacs from the Perspective of Novice and Regular Users, William Knottenbelt
An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi, William Joy and Mark Horton, 1984 (Note: Bill Joy helped write vi. Blame him.)

C / C++ / Assembly Programming Tutorials

Other Online Unix Training Compendium Sites

CRISP: Community Resource and Instructor Support Program -- "The site for Unix instructors and aficionados to share ideas." Fresh content, looks like a good place. Some connectivity problems.
Unix Guru Universe - links to several online reference and review materials. A bit stale.

For a discussion of the various licenses used for redistributable online training materials, see www.gnu.org's list of free (and non-free) documentation licenses.

Last Change 2 Aug 2002
(C) Dan Kegel
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