Stage 1 · Lesson 1 of 8

Terminal, iTerm2 and zsh

Your , the program that reads your commands, runs inside a window. Every Mac comes with a terminal app called Terminal. Many developers also install iTerm2, which adds split , better search and saved profiles.

Either one is fine to start with. Since Catalina, the default shell is zsh. zsh runs almost all Bash commands the same way, so tutorials written for Bash still work. Underneath, macOS is a Unix system, close in spirit to Linux.

But its built-in command-line tools are the BSD versions, while Linux servers use the GNU versions. A few differ between the two, for example sed -i. Knowing this explains some odd errors later.

Common trapspending a week theming the terminal before you have learned any commands.

A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 2 cheat sheet entries come when you add the roadmap to your account. Add it

Resources for this stage

Start with

CourseFree
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
MIT · Beginner
The first lecture introduces the shell with exercises that work in the macOS terminal

Keep handy

Homebrew
The install command and documentation for the package manager you will use for every tool
Visual Studio Code
The editor used through this roadmap, with official set-up guides for each operating system

Also worth your time

roadmap.sh: LinuxGo deeper
A map of the whole Linux topic, to see how much there is beyond this stage