Linux for DevOps
Learn Linux for DevOps from scratch - file system, permissions, processes, bash scripting, and production server management.
What You'll Learn
What is an Operating System
Every computer is just raw hardware — a CPU that does calculations, RAM that holds data temporarily, a disk that stores things permanently, and a...
What is Linux
Linux is a free, open-source operating system kernel created by Linus Torvalds in 1991.
The Linux Kernel
When people say "Linux," they technically mean the kernel — the single most important piece of software in the entire system.
Linux Distributions
The Linux kernel alone is not a usable operating system.
Virtualization - Computers Inside Computers
Virtualization lets one physical machine pretend to be many separate computers. Each "pretend computer" is called a Virtual Machine (VM).
Setting Up Your Linux Environment
Before practising anything, you need a Linux machine to work on. There are three good ways depending on your situation.
Skills You'll Master
Curriculum Index37 topics
What is an Operating System
Every computer is just raw hardware — a CPU that does calculations, RAM that holds data temporarily, a disk that stores...
What is Linux
Linux is a free, open-source operating system kernel created by Linus Torvalds in 1991.
The Linux Kernel
When people say "Linux," they technically mean the kernel — the single most important piece of software in the entire...
Linux Distributions
The Linux kernel alone is not a usable operating system.
Virtualization - Computers Inside Computers
Virtualization lets one physical machine pretend to be many separate computers.
Setting Up Your Linux Environment
Before practising anything, you need a Linux machine to work on. There are three good ways depending on your situation.
The Linux Filesystem
On Windows, files live under drive letters: C:\, D:\. Linux works completely differently.
Essential Navigation Commands
These are the commands you will type hundreds of times every week. They need to become automatic.
File and Directory Management
This is where you spend a significant portion of your time on any Linux server.
File Permissions
Permissions are one of the most important concepts in Linux.
Text Processing - The DevOps Superpower
Think about what a DevOps engineer actually does every day: search through thousands of log lines to find one specific...
User and Group Management
Linux is a multi-user system by design. Multiple people can be logged in simultaneously, and multiple services can run...
Process Management
A process is any running program. When you run ls, a process starts, prints output, and exits in milliseconds.
System Monitoring
A full disk is one of the most common causes of production outages.
Environment Variables
Environment variables are named values that exist in your shell session and can be read by any program you launch from...
The vi Editor - You Must Know This
vi is installed on every single Linux system — including the most minimal Docker container and broken servers in...
Package Management
This is how you install, update, and remove software on Linux — like an app store from the terminal.
Networking Basics
Checking your network DNS — how names become IPs SSH — connecting to remote servers SSH keys — the professional way...
Scheduling with Crontab
Cron runs commands automatically at specified times.
Shell Scripting - Automating Everything
A shell script is a text file containing a sequence of shell commands that runs automatically from top to bottom.
Disk and Storage Management
Understanding your storage Adding and using a new disk LVM — expand storage without downtime Without LVM, resizing a...
The Linux Boot Process
Understanding the boot process helps you fix servers that will not start and understand how services initialise.
Quick Reference - Commands You Will Use Every Single Day
Navigation and files Create, copy, move, delete Permissions Text processing Processes and services Networking Packages...
Understanding Why DevOps Engineers Live in Linux
3:12 AM. The checkout API starts returning 500 errors and the pager goes off.
Setting Up Linux and Finding Your Way Around
Which practice setup should a beginner choose? Pick whichever gets you to a working terminal fastest.
Managing Files and Directories
How do you create files and directories? touch creates an empty file (or updates the timestamp of an existing one).
Managing Users, Groups and sudo
How does Linux store users and groups? Linux is a multi-user system: many people and services share one machine, each...
Controlling Access with File Permissions
How do you read a permission string? Every file has an owner, a group, and three sets of permissions: for the owner...
Processing Text with Pipes, grep, find, awk and sed
How do pipes and redirection connect commands?
Managing Processes, Services and Logs
What is a process? A process is a running program.
Monitoring System Health
How do you check disk space with df and du?
Installing Software and Moving Files
How do package managers install software?
Networking from the Command Line
How do you see IP addresses and routes? Every network connection starts from an interface (a network card, real or...
Managing Disks, Volumes and LVM
How does Linux see disks? Linux shows each disk as a device file in /dev, and each partition (a slice of a disk) as a...
Automating Work with Bash Scripts and Cron
How do you write and run your first script? A shell script is a text file of commands that runs top to bottom.
Building a Monitored Web Server Hands-On
What will you build in this lab? You will turn a fresh Ubuntu server into a small production-style web host: nginx...
Troubleshooting Linux with a Quick Reference
How do you troubleshoot a slow or broken server?
Career Impact
Roles that use the skills in this module.
- Very High
Automation Engineer
₹5L - ₹12L a year
- High Demand
DevOps Engineer
₹8L - ₹18L a year
- High Demand
Systems Engineer
₹6L - ₹14L a year
Next Modules
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Practice on the Coding Sheet
Not a software engineer sheet. Every problem comes from real DevOps, SRE, Platform and Cloud interviews, from your first script to a system you build yourself.
Open the Coding Sheet