I was tired of forgetting Linux commands, so I turned learning them into a game

Vijay B V — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 14:04:25 +0000

Every few months I'd sit down to "finally learn the terminal properly." I'd open a cheatsheet, read through ls, cd, grep, chmod, nod along like it made sense, and then forget 80% of it the moment I closed the tab. The commands never stuck because I was memorizing them, not using them.
So I built the opposite of a cheatsheet

The idea - learning by doing a job, not reading a list. You play a new dev at a startup, your boss hands you tasks and you solve them in a real simulated shell.
How it works - 17 missions across 4 stages, from basic navigation to pipes and permissions to many more in the road map . It checks the actual command you type. No signup to start.
What I learned building it - Designing the UI was most challenging coz the idea of doing this was actually an inspiration from git-mastery. Took core principles from it and started pivoting towards my goal

Still rough in places and I'd love feedback, especially on whether the difficulty ramps too fast around the missions. Happy to answer anything about how the command-checking works under the hood.Feel free to drop suggestions and make corrections along the way . Mainly around the mission diffculty curve that is been bugging me out for days now

It's free and open-source and don't hesitate to drop an issue or a PR
Play here: https://linux-mastery.abacusai.cloud/
Github : https://github.com/Vijaybv-11/linux-mastery

Also do check out git-mastery : https://gitmastery.me/

DEV Community: Vijay B V

I was tired of forgetting Linux commands, so I turned learning them into a game