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Bashou: a terminal pet that teaches Linux commands

Bashou is a free, open source way to learn the Linux command line and bash scripting, for beginners and beyond. It's a terminal pet: a little pixel-art pet lives in the corner of your terminal and grows as you use real commands, gives you tips, and explains what each command does. It runs offline, with no account and no AI.

Source code and guide: github.com/IAmAStealer/Bashou (MIT license).

What you learn

Linux commands: files, grep, find, pipes, awk and sed, permissions, processes, disks, archives, packages with apt and dnf, systemd services.
Bash scripting: variables, quotes, $( ), loops, set -euo pipefail.
And, if you pick them: networks (IPv4, IPv6, DNS, TCP), git, gpg and pass, SQL, CI/CD, Python, C and Rust.

How it teaches

bashou learn <command> takes any command apart and explains each option.
Lessons with drawings, on a path from your first command to scripts.
Fights in a sandbox shell: beat each threat with the right tool, then it comes back after 1, 7 and 30 days so you remember.
Projects to build in Python, Shell, C or Rust, one small step at a time.
An adventure with quiz questions about what goes wrong and what to check first, and a quick game, bashou spot, to recognise an IPv6 address, a hash or base64 at a glance.

A fight: the pet and its hearts face the Log Hydra, with the task in a bubble and a shell below

Install on Debian, Ubuntu

sudo mkdir -p -m 755 /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/apt/keyrings/bashou.asc https://iamastealer.github.io/Bashou/bashou.asc
printf '%s\n' 'Types: deb' 'URIs: https://iamastealer.github.io/Bashou/deb/' 'Suites: ./' \
  'Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/bashou.asc' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bashou.sources
sudo apt update && sudo apt install bashou

Install on Rocky, Alma, RHEL, Fedora

sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/yum.repos.d/bashou.repo https://iamastealer.github.io/Bashou/bashou.repo
sudo dnf install bashou

Then open a new terminal

Your pet is there. If it isn't (on Debian and Ubuntu, some terminals don't read the system's settings), run:

bashou on

It adds one line to your ~/.bashrc, and bashou off hides the pet. Updates come with the rest of the system (apt upgrade, dnf upgrade). Packages and repository data are signed with the Bashou key: apt and dnf refuse anything else. Any other Linux: install with git, see the README.

Your data stays on your machine

Bashou collects nothing: no account, no telemetry, no ads. It counts the tools you use, keeps those counters in your home folder and never sends them anywhere.