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Linux Mastery Roadmap(Beginner → Industry Ready)

Phase 1: Linux Basics

Phase 1 (0-2 Months)

Get comfortable using Linux daily — commands, file systems, and terminal navigation.

📘 Introduction to Linux

  1. 1. What is Linux? Kernel, distributions, shells
  2. 2. Difference between Linux, Unix, macOS, Windows
  3. 3. Popular distros: Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, Arch

💻 Basic Command-Line Usage

  1. 1. Navigating the filesystem: pwd, cd, ls, tree
  2. 2. File management: cat, cp, mv, rm, find, locate
  3. 3. Viewing file content: less, head, tail, grep
  4. 4. File permissions: chmod, chown, umask
  5. 5. Creating and editing files: nano, vim, touch

🗂️ File System Structure

  1. 1. /home, /etc, /bin, /var, /usr, /tmp
  2. 2. Understanding symbolic links vs hard links
  3. 3. Mounting/unmounting drives and USBs

🧰 Basic Utilities

  1. 1. tar, zip, scp, rsync, curl, wget
  2. 2. du, df, top, htop, free, ps, kill

⚙️ Shell Basics

  1. 1. Bash vs Zsh vs Fish
  2. 2. Understanding shell history, aliases, and environment variables
  3. 3. Command piping (|) and redirection (>, >>, <)

🎯 Mini Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Create a personal CLI shortcut library (alias)
  2. 2. ✅ Write a backup script for /home using tar and rsync
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 2: Intermediate System Admin

Phase 2 (2-4 Months)

Understand the system internals, services, users, and automation.

👥 User & Group Management

  1. 1. useradd, passwd, usermod, groupadd, su, sudo
  2. 2. Understanding /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group
  3. 3. Access control with chmod and chown

🧩 Process & Job Management

  1. 1. Foreground vs background jobs
  2. 2. ps, top, nice, renice, kill, systemctl
  3. 3. Cron jobs (crontab -e) and at scheduling

📦 Package Management

  1. 1. Debian (APT): apt-get, dpkg
  2. 2. Red Hat (YUM/DNF): yum, rpm
  3. 3. Compile from source (make, gcc, ./configure)

🔧 System Services & Boot Process

  1. 1. systemd, journalctl, systemctl
  2. 2. Runlevels and targets
  3. 3. Logs: /var/log, dmesg, rsyslog

🧾 Filesystem Management

  1. 1. fdisk, lsblk, mount, umount, blkid
  2. 2. Partitioning & formatting drives (mkfs, parted)
  3. 3. LVM basics (Logical Volume Manager)

🎯 Mini Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Automate daily system updates using cron
  2. 2. ✅ Configure and manage a simple Apache/Nginx web server
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 3: Advanced Administration

Phase 3 (4-6 Months)

Master networking, security, system optimization, and troubleshooting.

🌐 Networking Essentials

  1. 1. IP addressing, subnetting, DNS, routing
  2. 2. Commands: ifconfig, ip, netstat, ss, ping, traceroute, nslookup
  3. 3. Configure static IP, hostname, and DNS resolver
  4. 4. ufw, firewalld, iptables basics

🔒 Linux Security

  1. 1. SSH hardening (/etc/ssh/sshd_config)
  2. 2. Key-based authentication
  3. 3. File permissions deep dive (setuid, setgid, sticky bit)
  4. 4. sudo policies & /etc/sudoers
  5. 5. SELinux and AppArmor overview

🧱 System Monitoring & Logs

  1. 1. journalctl, /var/log/messages, logrotate
  2. 2. System performance tools: iostat, vmstat, sar
  3. 3. Resource monitoring with htop, glances, nmon

🧩 Kernel & System Performance

  1. 1. Kernel modules: lsmod, modprobe
  2. 2. Tuning sysctl parameters (/etc/sysctl.conf)
  3. 3. Swappiness, memory management, CPU load averages

💾 Backup & Disaster Recovery

  1. 1. Full vs incremental backups
  2. 2. Automating with rsync, cron, tar
  3. 3. Snapshot tools (e.g., Timeshift, LVM snapshots)

🎯 Mini Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Secure SSH-only server setup with disabled root login
  2. 2. ✅ Create automated backup & restore scripts
Phase 3
Phase 4
Phase 4: Industry & Cloud Readiness

Phase 4 (6-9 Months)

Become production-ready — automation, scripting, cloud, and CI/CD.

⚙️ Bash Scripting Mastery

  1. 1. Variables, loops, conditionals
  2. 2. Functions, exit codes, input/output
  3. 3. Script arguments ($1, $@), case statements
  4. 4. Parsing logs, text processing with awk, sed, grep, cut

🚀 Bash Scripting Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Log parser for error alerts
  2. 2. ✅ System resource usage reporter
  3. 3. ✅ Automated deployment script

🐳 Linux for DevOps

  1. 1. Docker basics (containers vs VMs)
  2. 2. Kubernetes fundamentals (kubectl, pods, services)
  3. 3. CI/CD on Linux (GitHub Actions, Jenkins agents)
  4. 4. Config management: Ansible, Terraform basics

☁️ Linux in Cloud Environments

  1. 1. Managing Linux on AWS EC2, GCP, Azure
  2. 2. Cloud-init and user-data scripts
  3. 3. SSH access & key management
  4. 4. Monitoring with CloudWatch, Grafana, Prometheus

🛠️ Troubleshooting & Incident Response

  1. 1. Memory leaks, disk space, zombie processes
  2. 2. Network debugging (tcpdump, nmap)
  3. 3. Emergency recovery (rescue mode, chroot repair)

🧩 Certification Prep (Optional)

  1. 1. LPIC-1 / CompTIA Linux+ / RHCSA / LFCS
  2. 2. Infrastructure-as-Code (Ansible + Terraform)

🏆 Final Projects

  1. 1. ✅ Secure web server stack (Nginx + SSL + UFW + Fail2ban)
  2. 2. ✅ Automate server provisioning with Bash + Ansible
  3. 3. ✅ Monitoring stack (Prometheus + Grafana) on Linux VM

🏆 Final Tips to Become Industry-Ready

Congratulations! You've completed the Linux Mastery Roadmap and are ready to design scalable, robust systems.