A six-hour Introduction to Linux on the freeCodeCamp.org channel, paid for by a Linux Foundation grant, is a sound first look at the system. It follows 14 of the 18 chapters of the foundation’s own LFS101 course, has no labs, and its desktop chapters predate Ubuntu’s Wayland-only GNOME. Beginners should treat it as orientation and learn scripting elsewhere.
Linux for beginners: the free 6-hour course stops before scripting
Learning Linux costs nothing at the source. The Linux Foundation’s Introduction to Linux, course code LFS101, is listed at $0 on the foundation’s training portal with 18 chapters, about 60 hours of material, hands-on labs and a digital badge, and its edX edition had passed one million enrollments by September 2020. Price stopped being the obstacle years ago. The obstacle now is the gap between watching and typing, and the shortest free formats are the ones most likely to leave it open.
A widely watched example is Introduction to Linux – Full Course for Beginners, published on the freeCodeCamp.org YouTube channel on 23 February 2023 and taught by Beau Carnes. Its description credits a Linux Foundation grant, and its 14 chapter titles follow LFS101 almost word for word. Class Central, which named it the best video-based introduction in its guide to free Linux courses, described it as a video version of the foundation’s course and counted about 676,000 views. What the video leaves out, and what has changed since February 2023, decides how a beginner should use it.
Fourteen LFS101 chapters compressed into six hours
The timestamped chapter list in the description shows where the time goes. Roughly the first hour covers Linux families, philosophy and system startup, with chapter 3 alone running about 49 minutes. Chapters 4 to 6, on the graphical interface, desktop configuration and common applications, take about 67 minutes, from 1:05:36 to 2:12:57. Everything after that is the command line. Chapter 7, on command-line operations, runs for 73 minutes by itself and is followed by documentation, processes, file operations, text editors, the user environment, text manipulation and networking. More than half of the running time is terminal work, the right emphasis for anyone heading toward servers.
The adaptation is close but not exact. The video’s first chapter is called Introduction to Linux Families, while the first chapter of LFS101 is titled The Linux Foundation. The relationships behind the video are stated plainly in its description, which names the grant and the channel’s sponsor, the coding platform Scrimba. The funder also sells the next step: the LFS101 course page promotes the LFCS system administrator certification right beside the free course.
Four chapters and every lab stay on the foundation’s site
LFS101’s published outline continues past the point where the video ends. Chapters 15 and 16 cover the Bash shell and shell scripting, chapter 17 covers printing and chapter 18 covers local security principles. The video stops at chapter 14 of 18, with network operations starting at 5:40:04. Class Central’s review lists the other differences: no labs, no exercises and no certificate.
The size of the gap depends on whose estimate you use. The foundation’s course page lists 60 hours of material with labs, assignments, discussion forums and 90 days of access. Class Central put the edX edition at 70 to 98 hours. On either figure, simple division puts six hours of video at a tenth of the full workload or less. The missing chapters are not padding either. Scripting is the point where typed commands become repeatable tools, and a chapter on local security is the last one a future administrator should skip.
Desktop chapters aged faster than the terminal ones
Seven weeks after the upload, on 11 April 2023, the CentOS Project announced that CentOS Linux 7 would receive no updates after 30 June 2024, and laid out migration paths to CentOS Stream 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other systems rebuilt from the same sources. The family model the course teaches still holds, but a beginner looking for a free member of the Red Hat side now picks something other than CentOS Linux. Old servers have not vanished, though. TechnologyChecker still identifies CentOS on 32,041 web domains, against 13,392 for AlmaLinux.
The desktop moved too. On 10 June 2025 the Ubuntu desktop team announced that Ubuntu 25.10 runs its GNOME session only on Wayland, removing the Ubuntu on Xorg option from the login screen ahead of GNOME’s plan to drop Xorg support in GNOME 49. X11 applications still run through XWayland. The likely consequence, and this is an inference rather than a tested comparison, is that the hour of desktop chapters is the most perishable part of the course, while the commands taught in chapters 7 to 14 change slowly.
Windows 10’s end did not send a wave of beginners
Microsoft ended Windows 10 support on 14 October 2025, and its consumer Extended Security Updates programme now covers enrolled devices until 12 October 2027. If the deadline had pushed people to Linux, it would show in traffic data. Cloudflare Radar figures analysed by TechnologyChecker do not show it: Windows held about 74% of human desktop requests in August to October 2025 and in the same months of 2026, while Linux rose from 3.22% to 4.45%, mostly in mid-2026 as ChromeOS fell.
StatCounter puts Linux at 5.63% of desktop page views for October 2026, a higher figure partly because of what it counts. TechnologyChecker found that more than half of desktop requests claiming to run Linux were automated, and that StatCounter appears to have restated its own history. The practical point for a learner is modest. Desktop Linux is growing from a small base, and the Linux Foundation’s own case for the course rests on supercomputers, mobile devices and the cloud rather than on the desktop.
Many developers now meet Linux inside Windows
The developer data points the same way. Windows Latest, reporting Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey, gives Windows 49.5% among professional developers, macOS 32.9%, Ubuntu 27.7%, Windows Subsystem for Linux 16.8% and Linux outside WSL 16.7%, with respondents allowed to pick several. The same outlet reported in October 2026 that Ubuntu is growing faster on Windows 11 than on native Linux PCs.
Microsoft has made that route short. One command, wsl –install, sets up WSL with Ubuntu on Windows 10 version 2004 or later and on Windows 11. For a learner in that position the course splits in two. The chapters on system startup and the graphical desktop describe a machine they are not running, while most commands from chapter 7 onward can be practised in a WSL terminal. That reading follows from how WSL works; the video itself makes no claim about it.
Completion is the weak point of free video courses
Free online courses have a long record on finishing, and it is poor. Justin Reich and José Ruipérez-Valiente analysed every MITx and HarvardX course on edX up to May 2018 for Science. Of registrants, 52% never entered the course material, and only 3.13% of participants completed in the 2017 to 2018 year. Learners on the paid verified track finished at 46%, a group that differs in motivation as well as money.
Those figures come from university courses on edX, not from the Linux Foundation or YouTube, and they cannot be transferred directly. A YouTube video records views rather than completions, so nobody knows how many viewers reach chapter 14. The foundation’s one million figure counts enrollments, not finishers. The defensible reading is narrower: a six-hour video with no checkpoints gives a beginner nothing to measure progress against, and that is the gap the labs in LFS101 exist to close.
A practical order for working through the material
For a Windows user or career changer starting now, the material works best in a set order. Install a supported distribution, or run wsl –install, before pressing play. Treat chapters 1 to 3 as background and chapters 4 and 5 as orientation to check against the desktop version you actually have. Watch chapter 7 onward with a terminal open, pausing to type each command instead of nodding along.
Then move to the foundation’s own LFS101 for chapters 15 to 18, which are free on its portal with 90 days of access, and do the labs there. Class Central advises supplementing the video with other courses or exercises, and its guide lists OverTheWire’s Bandit, a puzzle game played over SSH that teaches command-line work alongside basic security ideas. Someone aiming at a system administrator role needs the full course and its exercises. Someone who only wants to stop being afraid of the terminal can stop after the video.
Six free hours earn their place as a first pass
The evidence supports a narrow verdict. The video is a close, openly funded adaptation of a free course that its own learners rate 4.6 out of 5, and its command-line half has probably aged better than its desktop chapters because the tools it teaches change slowly. It is incomplete by design: four chapters, every lab and any check of understanding sit elsewhere.
The uncertainty that matters most is completion, because nothing measures how many viewers finish or what they retain. A refreshed recording of the desktop chapters against Ubuntu’s Wayland-only session, or a follow-up that adds the scripting chapters with exercises, would change that assessment. Until then, the honest label for six free hours is orientation, and the course that teaches Linux properly is still the longer one the video was built from.
Author:
Jan Bielik
CEO & Founder of Webiano Digital & Marketing Agency
This article is an original analysis supported by the sources cited below
Introduction to Linux – Full Course for Beginners
The video page, giving the 23 February 2023 publication date, the 14-chapter timestamped outline, the Linux Foundation grant, the instructor credit and the Scrimba sponsorship note.
Introduction to Linux (LFS101)
The foundation’s course page, with the 18-chapter outline including Bash scripting, printing and local security, the $0 price, 60 hours of material, labs and 90 days of access.
Free Intro to Linux Course Surpasses One Million Enrollments
The Linux Foundation’s September 2020 announcement that its edX course, then in its sixth edition, had passed one million enrollments, and its case for Linux skills.
End dates are coming for CentOS Stream 8 and CentOS Linux 7
The CentOS Project’s notice of 11 April 2023 that CentOS Linux 7 would get no updates after 30 June 2024, with the migration options it recommended.
Ubuntu 25.10 drops support for GNOME on Xorg
The Ubuntu desktop team’s announcement of 10 June 2025 that the GNOME-based Ubuntu session runs only on Wayland from 25.10, ahead of GNOME 49.
Windows 10 support has ended on October 14, 2025
Microsoft’s support page confirming the end of Windows 10 support and consumer Extended Security Updates coverage until 12 October 2027.
Install WSL
Microsoft’s documentation of the single wsl –install command, its Windows version requirements and Ubuntu as the default distribution it installs.
The MOOC Pivot
Postprint of the 2019 Science article by Reich and Ruipérez-Valiente with edX completion data: 52% never entering courseware, 3.13% completion and 46% among verified learners.
9 Best Free Linux Courses for 2024: Embrace Free and Open
Class Central’s guide ranking the video as the best video-based introduction, noting it has no labs, exercises or certificate and estimating the edX course at 70 to 98 hours.
Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide
StatCounter’s page-view figures, putting Linux at 5.63% of desktop operating systems worldwide in October 2026.
Linux Market Share 2026: 4.5% of Human Desktops (6.7% If You Count Bots)
Analysis of Cloudflare Radar data showing Windows steady at about 74% after Windows 10’s end, bot inflation of Linux figures and CentOS still outnumbering AlmaLinux on servers.
Life is too short to support Windows users: Microsoft engineer responds, says more developers use Windows than macOS or Linux
Windows Latest’s report of Stack Overflow’s 2025 survey figures for professional developers’ operating systems, including WSL at 16.8%, and of Ubuntu growing faster on Windows 11.
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