Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure • Hacker News Board

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#11

Post by johnchristopher » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

Oh come on, first room and I already learn something new despite using linux for years :D

  alias ls='ls -F'

I am going to spend some time with it, I hope the awk rituals are explained later on :).

edit: Maybe the author should provide a list of commands that will be taught ?

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#12

Post by bitwize » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

This looks neat. Once upon a time -- back in the 80s -- there was a utility called 'learn' that was a Unix command line tutorial. After each lesson, you could do these exercises where you were dropped into a fake shell, replete with fake directories and that, and had to get things into a certain expected state. They were typical business-related tasks, nothing cool and dungeon-y, but I learned my basic Unix commands that way. It's good to see learning tools like this re-emerge.

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#13

Post by sodality2 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

I learned with Kano OS (kid's computer kit) running on a Raspberry Pi at age 12. A similar console-type game that taught me all the common commands still sticks with me to this day. This will be a good refresher, years later. :)

https://allthingsd.com/20131203/the-99-kids-computer-kit-kan...

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#14

Post by BiteCode_dev » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

It's pretty well done, I almost forgot I was in my shell, and when the games gets to "tree to map the dungeon", I was almost surprised I didn't think about it before: I felt like playing a game, not coding in bash :)

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#15

Post by praveen9920 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

This is the future of learning anything. I would rather play an engaging game than read 300 pages of text book and still has to Google for doing anything meaningful.

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#16

Post by xrd » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

sodality2 wrote: post #13

I learned with Kano OS (kid's computer kit) running on a Raspberry Pi at age 12. A similar console-type game that taught me all the common commands still sticks with me to this day. This will be a good refresher, years later. :) https://allthingsd.com/20131203/the-99-kids-computer-kit-kan...

Kano looks amazing. I wish it wasn't Windows even though I'm sure it would be a bad idea for most people to run Linux on it. But what a cool company. The peripherals are so cool.

Anyone know of a similar option for Linux based kids computer?

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#17

Post by sodality2 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

xrd wrote: post #16

sodality2 wrote: post #13

I learned with Kano OS (kid's computer kit) running on a Raspberry Pi at age 12. A similar console-type game that taught me all the common commands still sticks with me to this day. This will be a good refresher, years later. :) https://allthingsd.com/20131203/the-99-kids-computer-kit-kan...

Kano looks amazing. I wish it wasn't Windows even though I'm sure it would be a bad idea for most people to run Linux on it. But what a cool company. The peripherals are so cool. Anyone know of a similar option for Linux based kids computer?

The original Kano Computer Kit is Linux-based! You can run it on a Raspberry Pi or purchase the Raspberry Pi kit. Personally I just flashed the OS on a flash drive. https://kano.me/us/downloadable

It's only the newer Kano laptop that's Windows-based.

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#18

Post by beebeepka » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

praveen9920 wrote: post #15

This is the future of learning anything. I would rather play an engaging game than read 300 pages of text book and still has to Google for doing anything meaningful.

I can't learn anything really new to me by simply reading. Very much a hands on guy. School was hard. But not everyone is like that and while I agree that learning should be fun, I would very much like to not force what works for me on everyone else.

One man's fun is another man's nightmare

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#19

Post by johnklos » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

monsieurbanana wrote: post #9

johnklos wrote: post #6

It's one thing that so many people who really should know better call anything Unix-y Linux. Now we're completely going the whole way and calling macOS Linux, too? It's pedantic, I know, but when I see this, I can't help but imagine the person who chose to use the phrase "Linux commands" doesn't really know what they're doing.

> This is a game to teach you the basics of using a POSIX (Linux, BSD, UNIX) terminal. Second line of the README. You're not the target for this. If you just installed your first Linux distribution, don't know anything about the command line, you're not going to click on something called "Learn POSIX shell...".

You did see the title, right?

Re: Bashcrawl: Learn Linux commands by playing a simple text adventure

#20

Post by MrGilbert » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

johnklos wrote: post #19

monsieurbanana wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a game to teach you the basics of using a POSIX (Linux, BSD, UNIX) terminal. Second line of the README. You're not the target for this. If you just installed your first Linux distribution, don't know anything about the command line, you're not going to click on something called "Learn POSIX shell...".

You did see the title, right?

> [...] the person who chose to use the phrase "Linux commands" doesn't really know what they're doing.

I'm quite certain they know pretty well what they are doing. To catch people's attention, you need to use "their" language. People will search for "linux command" more often than for "posix command". And it's totally fine to use that in the description, just to make it more precise in the Readme.