Setup

Installation

This workshop is designed to teach Bash commands and key filesystem concepts to beginners on their own devices. This means that participants may encounter commands (like man command or the --help flag) that behave differently based on their laptop’s operating system. I have marked these instances wherever possible.

Do not worry too much about these distinctions! Lessons after today are conducted on Talapas, a RedHat Linux cluster. Differences among laptops are less relevant when everyone is on the same operating system.

Windows

Because Windows is not a UNIX-based operating system, Windows computers do not come with a Bash shell. For teaching purposes, Windows participants will rely on an emulator included with Git called Git Bash.

To start, download Git, install it, and open the Git Bash application from your Start Menu, which emulates a Bash shell on a Windows operating system.

Need help with the installation steps? I have included a screen-by-screen guide

MacOS

Open the Terminal application by searching for “Terminal” in Spotlight Search. The default shell Zsh will run all of the Bash commands in this lesson. If you would like to launch a Bash subshell, type the command bash and press Enter.

Linux

Open the Terminal application by searching for “Terminal” in the Applications menu. On popular deployments like Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian, the default shell is Bash.

Download and Extract Files

You need to download and extract a zip folder of activity files to follow along with this workshop.

Home directory absolute paths vary among operating systems. On Macs, it’s typically /users/joe, on Windows, it will typically C:\Users\Joe, and on Linux, it may look like /home/joe.

  1. Download talapas-bash.zip by clicking the button below and move the file to your home directory.
  2. Unzip/extract the file.
    • Mac: Double-click the .zip file in Finder.
    • Windows: Right-click the .zip in Windows Explorer, select Extract All.
    • Linux: Right-click the .zip in the GUI, select Extract Here.
    • Feeling confident?: Try unzip talapas-bash.zip from your Git Bash or Terminal application, which should open to your home directory.
  3. You should now have a folder called talapas-bash in your home directory.


Download Zip