Linux course for beginners: the 10 best in 2026

Best for beginners who learn best by testing themselves. Day one covers setting up Linux, Bash navigation, files and user permissions; day two covers streams and pipes, environment variables, package management and setting up a server with SSH to host a simple website.

It has 4.7 stars from 145 reviews and more than 1,400 students. It runs about six and a half hours with 33 quizzes and two practice exams, and was last updated in August 2025.

Best for busy beginners who want to learn over a weekend. Saturday covers installing Linux in VirtualBox, connecting with PuTTY, the file system, permissions and pipes; Sunday covers text processing, vi, users and sudo, processes and crontab, system monitoring, basic shell scripts, networking and package updates.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 2,600 reviews and more than 30,000 students. It runs about six hours with two quizzes, homework and 26 resources, and was updated in October 2026.

Best for complete beginners who want a quick, clear first look. It explains what Linux is and how it differs from Windows, server versus desktop editions and why there are so many distributions, then installs Ubuntu on your computer or creates a server in AWS and practises key commands such as ls, cd, cp, mv, grep and sudo.

It has 4.5 stars from more than 4,600 reviews and more than 16,000 students. It runs just under two hours, the shortest course here, with 18 quizzes and 14 resources, and was updated in June 2026.

Best for beginners who want to feel at home in the terminal. Colt Steele explains what terminals, shells and kernels are, then teaches navigation, creating and editing files with nano, moving and copying, streams and pipes, wildcards and expansions, find and grep, permissions, aliases and cron jobs, with exercises and challenges throughout.

It has 4.7 stars from more than 10,000 reviews and more than 61,000 students. It runs about 16 hours with three quizzes and 21 resources, and was updated in March 2026.

Best for beginners heading towards sysadmin or DevOps roles. It starts with terminal commands, the file system and user accounts, then covers permissions, processes, networking and troubleshooting, containers with Podman, task scheduling and using ChatGPT and ShellGPT, with labs on configuring servers and hardening security.

It has 4.5 stars from more than 5,000 reviews and more than 38,000 students. It runs about 22 hours with 27 quizzes and 49 resources, and was updated in June 2026.

Best for beginners who want to go straight on to server administration. After the command-line basics, Jason Cannon covers the boot process, system logs, disk partitioning, LVM, users and groups, network interfaces, sudo, process management and shell scripting, all assuming no prior Linux knowledge.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 31,000 reviews and more than 144,000 students. It runs about nine hours with eight quizzes and 26 resources, and was updated in October 2026.

Best for beginners with little time who want the core skills. In five days of about 45 minutes, Jason Cannon shows you how to get a Linux server, connect with SSH, find your way around the file system, manage files and permissions, edit with nano or vi, use pipes and redirection, schedule jobs with cron and install software.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 49,000 reviews, the most here, and more than 208,000 students. It runs about six and a half hours with four quizzes and 37 resources, and was updated in October 2026. A bonus shows how to install WordPress on Ubuntu.

Best for beginners who want to learn Linux and earn an entry-level certificate. It follows the LPI Linux Essentials 010-200 domains: the Linux community and open source, command-line basics, processing data at the command line, the parts of a Linux system, and users, groups and file permissions.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 11,000 reviews and more than 54,000 students. It runs about 11 hours with 27 quizzes, two practice tests and a study guide, and was updated in October 2026.

Best for beginners who want to become Linux system administrators. Imran Afzal starts by installing CentOS in VirtualBox, then teaches the file system, permissions, text processing, vi, user management, processes and cron, shell scripting, networking, package management and LVM, with homework and handouts in each module and resume and interview workshops at the end.

It has 4.6 stars from more than 47,000 reviews and more than 288,000 students, the most on this list. It runs about 43 hours with 10 quizzes, a practice test and 148 resources, and was updated in October 2026.