Want to learn more about Linux? Excellent! Install a distribution inside a virtual environment, and you’ll be ready in a few minutes. But one thing is to know Linux, and another is to absorb its details. Sooner or later, Linux requires a visit to its terminal, and that’s where most people come to a screeching halt. That’s when the Webminal portal steps in, offering an online Linux terminal to learn its main commands, without needing to install operating systems or external modules.
Overcoming the Fear of the Terminal
One of the things I still remember perfectly from my DOS days is that the vast majority of users were terrified of the black screen with the blinking cursor. Obviously, the key to overcoming that fear was knowing its main commands, but without that information, the average user felt very unprotected. Over the years, graphical interfaces arrived, although the circumstances that demand a visit to the terminal were never completely eliminated. This is especially true under Linux. Distributions have advanced a lot, developing friendlier and more intuitive interfaces, but if one day Synaptic (or another package manager) wakes up in a bad mood, you’ll have to set things straight with apt-get, YUM, or whatever (depending on the distribution).
Learn Linux Commands Online
In other words, anyone who wants to spend a significant amount of time inside Linux needs to know the essential terminal commands very well. Thanks to Webminal, all interested parties can do this for free, from any corner of the globe, with just an Internet connection and a compatible browser (they recommend Firefox and Chrome). Once registration is complete (it takes a few minutes), Webminal presents an online terminal ready to use, accompanied by a series of basic lessons that range from listing and creating directories, to generating files, displaying their content, moving them between folders, and deleting them.
Webminal also offers the possibility of modifying the distribution you want to work with, and there is extra material focused on learning MySQL. The free Webminal account is enough to study the essential details of a Linux terminal, but there are more advanced plans that incorporate complex lessons (partitioning, file recovery, etc.) and more online space. Linux doesn’t bite, however, you need the right tools to communicate that, and Webminal is one of them.
