There is so much information missing in the labs in this course esp starting from Week 3. The videos it seems like were put together in a hurry with crucial information missing and labs are even worse than the videos. They are expecting one to find, set, unset files in extremely long scripts without providing any information on how it is done. Furthermore, there is little to no information given on why certain commands are called what they are called making this course not at all intuitive. I wish someone else has reviewed this course before putting it online. Such a wasted opportunity to educate people.

This need a lot more hands-on experience and explaining the *why* of commands. The course never explained any logic behind operators and commands, so it was never clear how everything worked.

Everything that follows, is just my own personal opinion, if not stated otherwise. It is based on my observations and interactions with teaching staff in the course discussion forums (for the last few years). This is a very poorly executed course. As of today (26 Mar 2025) this course for me still does not meet the criteria of a "good resource for learning" the basics of Linux CLI and shell scripting (despite few minor improvements already applied). Some of the topics are hastily skimmed through in the videos, and almost no mechanism presented in the course is thoroughly explained. Many of the "basic concepts" for Bash (and other modern shells) like e.g. function definitions, proper error handling, etc., are not even included in the course. The importance of using correct quotations for variable/parameter expansions is also never mentioned nor explained, although it should be considered essential "best practice". Peer-graded Final Assignment instructions/"guide" contains some errors and not fully tested solutions, advertised as "working correctly". The similar can be said about grading rubrics for the final assignment - which additionally are not focused on the actual results of the code execution, but instead they're focused on the code "looks", as in its visual resemblance (being as close to "identical" as possible) to what the course's staff have written in the grading rubrics. In some cases, if the teaching staff finds a question in a discussion forum a bit more "inconvenient" for them to answer (or they're not fully capable of providing the correct answer to it in a timely manner?), then they would rather: a) ignore the question completely (the least they can do is to not get involved at all) or reply with something similar to: "we'll investigate the issue and get back to you" (the latter "get back to you" almost never happens for a "more complicated" question); b) reply with some irrelevant, impractical, incorrect, or otherwise unuseful information; c) politely ask, to not bring the subject up ever again, as it may "overwhelm the learners"; d) delete the post (most often containing a valid, correct answer to the question) from discussion forums (I see censorship as "means of hiding incompetence"?) e) repeat other learner's correct answer (sometimes only slightly modifying it); f) use and completely rely on AI LLM (e.g. ChatGPT, Bard, or other) and answers provided by it (which are mostly ridiculous), without even basic output verification; g) and also (occasionally) delete any relevant corrections (made by more knowledgeable learners) to previous staff's posts/replies; than admit to any mistakes in the course contents, admit to lack of expertise in the subject matter, and address the questions properly - e.g. by allowing open discussion on potential improvements to the course materials, and implementing all said improvements as soon as possible (after reviewing). These practices have been reported, and as I was assured by the Coursera Support Team, this kind of inappropriate teaching staff's behaviors will be escalated further, so I'm awaiting next developments of the situation. But I still think this kind of inappropriate behaviors are a clear example, of what gives (or rather should give) the Skill-Up Technologies Pvt. Ltd. / SkillUp Online (employers for the most of "teaching staff") a bad reputation. This also might give Coursera courses and IBM Skills Network a really bad publicity in a long-run. Teaching and following "best practices", and answering doubts with relevant, thorough, technical knowledge in the discussion forums of this course... is something you unlikely/rarely find coming from the teaching staff. Generally, teaching staff don't seem to be fit for the job of thoroughly explaining the course materials and teaching the proper "understanding" of your mistakes (as hard as they try to be seen "cooperative"), but as I see it, they're better suited for a) only requesting you to "copy and paste" their code samples, that they believe should work best as a "correct solution" in their opinions (side note, again, "my opinion" - their code doesn't work all that great, and is not written with all the "best practices" in mind) and b) deleting "inconvenient" posts from the discussion forums whenever they please. To sum it up: in its current form, and with its current teaching staff replying in the discussion forums, I'd definitely not recommend this course to anyone, especially beginners. And I'd discourage seeking any "great" learning experience from Skill-Up Technologies Pvt. Ltd. / SkillUp Online - thus I'd strongly suggest searching for some other, better resources on the subjects regarding basics of working with Linux CLI and shell scripting.

This course is terrible for beginners!! None of the modules go in depth, it was difficult to understand because none of the commands are explained, and the final project is super advanced for what is actually taught in the class. I feel like I learned almost nothing!

would prefer a live instructor. not a generic AI voice reading a PPT. would not recommend.

This course is so bad, the instructions are insufficient, and the teachings compared to the project are different, highly do not recommend

The course was not uptown the mark.

The whole course was explained by a google teacher?

This is actually not acceptable from IBM

poor content

it's really not easy and so clear for any beginner to start with!

the material was not sufficient

the last assignment was not clear and the answer of some task was given in the question!!!.

I have completed several courses as part of the IBM Data Engineering Professional Certificate, and most of them have been exceptional in terms of content and coherence. However, I must express my disappointment with a particular course in the series. The course content seemed incomplete, lacking the depth and breadth that I have come to expect from IBM courses. This made it difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

Good overview, but should have included more using BASH scripts. Conditional statements and loops were not covered. Functions were not covered. Could have included catching errors with "$?". Running a database command in a BASH script to import or export data would be useful. Still a decent course though.

I have a few qualms on this still good, dense course: (1) - there is a lot of jargon that is taken for granted. For someone new to programming - you can easily get lost - especially when certain programs are only mentioned once and then taken to be known (e.g. Kubernetes, RedHat etc.) A cheat sheet would be very welcome. (2) the videos, while clear, are very dense, and the voice is very mono-tone which became quite a turn-down. To make sure students capture it it would be helpful to have more cross-checking questions during the lecture. (3) the final peer reviewed exercise is tricky and the peer review system doesn't work that great. with all the talk on automated checking in IBMs DevOps course I would think an automated check would be more effective - and could actually point out to you what you did wrong. for example - I had trouble figuring out a certain line of code and I actually asked chatGPT - turns out I had one space too much. in another case I came up with a slightly different code which did the same job. My peer reviewer rated it wrong.

Great course, thorough introduction and easy to follow.

However, this course and others in the IBM professional certificate are plagued with peers who blatantly mark assessments incorrectly. The fact that you have to rely on peer grading to pass and are subject to their emotional swings is outrageous. This course loses all credibility by associating itself with an online learning education platform that won't rectify a flawed feature.

If you don't know anything about Linux and commands this is for you, but if you are looking for a more advanced course stay away. I remove 1 star because is too basic and short, and could cover more things, and another star, because peer review is a joke, I got a 90 instead a 100, because the reviewer of my project apparently doesn't understand and take away 2 points from correct answers.

Some help but lacks pedagogical skill in its design.

A great start for beginners who wish to nail down the basics of shell scripting

Overall, the course is very nicely designed and implemented except for the last week where they have shell scripting assignment. The way it is collected should be revisited as it kills the user experience by introducing redundant task of manually screenshotting every code snippet separately. Which is hectic in my opinion.

I missed more input on actuall scripting. There were no references to loops, if and function definition. all things that you need when writing more advanced scripts

If you've never used Linux before this may be helpful. But it you have experience with it this course is pretty worthless. I finished it in less than an hour.