AI Basics: a study buddy, not an oracle
When I started with Linux in 1999, there was no AI to ask. Today an AI can explain an error message in seconds, at any hour. That's amazing, and it's also wrong sometimes, very confidently. This path teaches you to get the good without the bad, and then to run an AI model on your own computer.
Is this path for you?
- You can open a terminal and run commands (Linux Basics, lesson 2)
- You can install software on your family of Linux (Linux Basics, lesson 11)
- For the second lesson: a computer with at least 8 GB of memory, if you want to run a model for real (the practice terminal works on anything)
You can take this path any time after the first few Linux Basics lessons. The sooner you learn to check an AI's answers, the better.
What's ahead
| Lesson | You'll learn to… |
|---|---|
| AI as your Linux sidekick | ask questions that get correct answers, spot dangerous or made-up commands, and keep secrets out of chats |
| Run your own AI on Linux | install Ollama, chat with a model that runs on your machine, and call it from a Python script |
More AI lessons are planned: prompting for sysadmin tasks, AI agents that run commands, and using AI safely in scripts.
Online AI services have age rules. Some require users to be 13 or older with a parent's permission, and some require 18+. Check the terms of any service before a student signs up. A model you run yourself (the second lesson) needs no account at all, and nothing you type leaves the computer.