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Dan Higgins
Dan Higgins

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Day 10: CTRL+ALT+WOW — Our Command-Line Glow-Up Recap!

Welcome to Day 10 of our 10-part beginner-friendly journey into RHEL 9 — aka Linux for Real People Who Like Laughing and Learning.

If you've stuck with me from Day 1, then congratulations: you now officially know more Linux than the average cat (and I'm not just talking about cat filename.txt).

Today isn’t about new commands — it’s about honoring the wild ride we’ve had. Think of this as the terminal-themed version of a high school yearbook. Let’s roll back through the bashful beginnings, the pipe-dreams, and the chmod-fueled chaos...

📚 Table of Contents

Day 1: pwd Where’s My Shell At?

We kicked off lost in a terminal window — unsure of who we were, where we were, or what planet /home/user existed on. But pwd and ls gave us a sense of location, and suddenly we weren’t terminal tourists anymore.

Day 2: mkdir Mayhem

We got bold. We made directories. Nested folders. Rebelled against mkdir fail messages. We became creators — and occasionally destroyers (looking at you, rmdir).

Day 3: The Assassins of the Shell

Enter touch, cat, and rm. We met the quiet librarian who shows us file contents… and the file hitman who doesn’t ask any questions. We touched greatness — and sometimes deleted it by accident.

Day 4: Permission, Please

It was time to get serious. We met the cryptic rw-r--r-- code and learned how to claim ownership with chown and wield power (safely-ish) with chmod. We made secret diaries, and hopefully, no one sudoed into them.

Day 5: Backup Before You Break It

We faced real-world panic: “Did I just overwrite my project folder with a typo?” Cue cp, mv, and the almighty man to explain everything in tiny font. We survived. Just barely.

Day 6: Finders Keepers

Files were lost. Tempers were tested. But find, head, tail, and wc made us detectives of the filesystem. We counted lines, sniffed out files, and peeked inside logs like responsible hackers.

Day 7: Top Secrets & Sneaky Processes

We peeked behind the curtain. top, ps, and uptime helped us spy on our system like digital spies. And free -h told us how much memory our chaos was using.

Day 8: Let’s Get Greppy

If grep were a person, it’d be that friend who finds exactly what you're ranting about in the group chat. We became pattern-hunters, search wizards, and logs no longer scared us.

Day 9: Pipes, Please!

You mastered the ancient art of chaining commands together like a Linux wizard. |, >, >>, and < turned us from button-mashers into elegant stream-benders. Power. Flow. Control.

So, What Now?

If this journey proved anything, it’s this:

You don’t need to be “technical” to learn Linux. You just need curiosity, caffeine, and a little chaos.

You now know how to:

  • Navigate your way out of /etc/panic
  • Create and delete files like a cool kid
  • Read logs, manipulate text, monitor systems
  • Chain together commands with confidence

You’ve built real command-line muscle — one typo at a time.

Your Next Steps:

  • Try out a personal Linux project. Make a Bash script. Break something (then fix it!).
  • Start exploring tools like cron, ssh, scp, or the package manager dnf.
  • Study for RHCSA if you’re certification-curious.
  • Share your journey — because the terminal isn’t as lonely as it looks

Final Words (Before I exit)

To everyone who followed along — thank you. Your comments, encouragement, and “oh no I deleted everything” messages made this adventure feel like a community campfire… with slightly more chmod.

Until next time:

echo "Goodbye, world!" > final.txt

Catch you on the command line.

— CloudWhistler

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