How to teach Bash/Linux so high school students will be intrigued?

Post date: 2020-11-21 06:20:53

I'm teaching an Intro to CS course in high school and want to use the short week before Thanksgiving to introduce them to a command-line OS — namely, Bash on some vanilla Linux (Debian, I assume). How do I induce them to conclude anything other than "wow, command-line is a pain in the ass?"

I've never used Linux or Bash when I needed to, so my experience is limited to some 'ls -al' and 'chmod,' along with a hopeful course in Vim. Given that I will have 2 1/2 days, 80-minute periods, what can I realistically have the students do that will make a light bulb turn on in their minds?

Understand that about 1/3 of these students were just about demolished by Python, so shell scripting or dense one-liners with pipes will be hopeless. Just some practices that show what's grand about Bash, rather than what's arcane or inconvenient.

Thanks!

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