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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User by Google

4.7
stars
27,196 ratings

About the Course

In this course -- through a combination of video lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on practice -- you’ll learn about the main components of an operating system and how to perform critical tasks like managing software and users, and configuring hardware. By the end of this course you’ll be able to: ● navigate the Windows and Linux filesystems using a graphical user interface and command line interpreter ● set up users, groups, and permissions for account access ● install, configure, and remove software on the Windows and Linux operating systems ● configure disk partitions and filesystems ● understand how system processes work and how to manage them ● work with system logs and remote connection tools ● utilize operating system knowledge to troubleshoot common issues in an IT Support Specialist role...

Top reviews

MD

May 23, 2020

A wonderful course of prevention that I learned a lot from,

Using commands with Windows and Linux

How to deploy and install operating systems through the network and Alot

Thanks GOOOOOOOOOGLE

BO

Apr 1, 2019

This is my most favorite module module, especially the Linux, which is my all time favorite OS ever enjoy learning, working Programing, and configuring, and will continue enjoying til the end of time.

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3826 - 3850 of 5,274 Reviews for Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User

By Hector J

May 12, 2019

I was going to give this a 3 out of 5 originally but It did have a lot new information that an IT support will need at some point. I did however feel the person presenting the course sounded robotic at times, it felt like she was just following along the prompt to much therefore made the course boring. Since I was new the command lines, PowerShell and Linux I did feel lost many times. I would like to see more real world examples. I also did not like seeing the same person for 99% of the course, which made this a little lame. It could use a mix of people more often. Again it's going to be rare to apply all this new information. I know I will forget how to some of these commands sense they are not used daily. I need to find a way to remember this stuff in the future, good thing I took a lot of notes.

By Hélène M

Apr 15, 2020

The course was globally good: the videos were always interesting and the topic was well explained. There was a lot to learn/remember (the commands in both Linux and Windows) so I recommend writing it down! The only thing that doesn't give this course a five out of five ratings is the labs... The time for the last labs was too short and the instructions were not very clear. I know that it was done that way so the learner can work autonomously but I was permanently not sure of what I was doing or why I was obtaining points. It misses, for example, something that shows the learners' progress. I saw that a lot of other learners thought the same thing as me so I think that it needs some improvement in this part. Overall, it was a good course and I recommend to take part in this course :)

By Jason W

Feb 9, 2023

This Course like the others was very informative and comprehensive. Over all I think these courses are great. There are a couple of things that could be improved.

#1) Qwiklabs has a lot of bugs during the session and they can be very frustrating to work to resolve while completing the Labs.

#2) The search index for course content seems to struggle with some words or word combos in the lessons. Searches often turn up empty. Especially when searching for command key words or full code expressions.

#3) It would be really great if at the completion of each week's lesson, or after receiving the certificate for each individual Course, that a Complete Table of the Coding / Programming Commands used in each week, was unlocked as a study tool, and to maintain that knowledge.

By Mark F

May 20, 2021

Good information, but please for crying out loud proofread the text Fix The Typos!! There are many places where commands given in the video narration are missing/incomplete in the text. Syntax matters in this case and for a complete beginner these inconsistency's can cause lots of unneeded confusion. It's obvious a speech-to-text converter was used because it does not interpret commands correctly, nor can it help if the instructor's voice level drops (or she stops talking completely...grrr) while she's typing commands. I realize that students are supposed to watch the videos, but the text needs to be accurate as well. One star off for this sloppiness, especially coming from someone like Google. I would have expected better.

By jacob p

Mar 18, 2019

I want to give this 5 stars so much but I feel like it fell short on a few things. Firstly the linux labs with there pkk files were not well introduced so the first lab was a struggle to get into. Also all the other linux labs seemed to have there own quarks such as having to deviate from the parameters laid out. Which if done on purpose brilliant! If not then just a head ache. But the final labs were amazing and just made me wish all the labs had been like that. Because those were the best simulation of on the job work. The instructor was lovely. And the course material was great. Just need a little polish on the labs and an increase in difficulty and it would be exquisite.

By Nicholas D

Feb 20, 2018

Qwiklab assignments are quite slow to recognize actions taken in the VMs (a couple of minutes), which is understandable. Sometimes, however, I would get 50/50 on a lab and then end the lab. I go back and it doesn't show up as completed (or even attempted). Wait a couple of days for the system to work. Nope still not there. Support was able to help quickly and resolve the problem after providing screenshots of the completed lab, but one lab I had to redo because I forgot to take a screenshot at the end of it. I have no idea where the grade gets lost between the Google Cloud Platform/Qwiklabs and the main Coursera system but it happened multiple times for me. :/

By J L

Sep 3, 2023

Full of valuable information! But could have been even better. I really liked the last lab- it encouraged the exploration of new methods and creative solutions, but there was always the option to go back in the course to reference material as a last resort. I feel like there should have been more of these labs. Perhaps shorter ones allow users to really play around with new commands and refresh older ones that are very often used alongside the new one(s).

Some real-life scenarios, maybe multiple-choice, could be implemented, too. These methods were used in another certification program I've been in (CareerStep, Medical Coding & Billing).

By Sébastien L

Dec 22, 2018

This was good. I enjoyed course #2 much more than the other two so far. Many of the references that are given as "Supplemental Reading" in this course are quite boring considering the vast amount of stuff one could learn. Many topics in those sections are simply useless: I don't care about flags and options available for a command, that's what the built-in help command is for. Otherwise, you can quickly Google your way around. You won't be a power user after taking this course, but some notions are very useful and well presented, such as users and groups permissions, process management and troubleshooting with the help of system logs.

By Dionmy A C D

Oct 7, 2018

Parecerá extraño lo que diré pero ha sido el tema que más me ha gustado y disfruté mis logros; pero a la vez, me ha hecho sentir frustración, impotencia, y en ocasiones, ganas de dejarlo. Me sentía como una pelota de tennis donde Venus Linux y Serena Windows me agarraban a raquetazos tirándome de un lugar a otro o Messy Linux y Ronaldo Windows me daban a patadas y me mandaban de un campo a otro. Era como si estuviera haciendo dos cursos en uno. Pero uds. y los del Qwiklab no dejaban que me diera por vencida. Así que, GRACIAS A UDS. lo terminé.

Realmente preferiría ambos temas impartidos aparte con muchos Lab.

By Omar M

Apr 2, 2021

Excelente material, lo único que se batalla es en las pruebas pues en mi caso el teclado en Windows no encontraba caracteres que se usan en el curso, use teclado en pantalla, y o buscar comandos en el navegador y pegarlos y la ultima practica en Linux esta mal optimizado el área de trabajo una quinta parte de lado izquierdo contra otras 4 partes derecho de la información ojala revisen esos detalles habrá personas que batallaran mucho mas que yo; Nota yo uso opera y la experiencia en las otras practicas si fue buena, pero como los últimos laboratorios me mostraban fallas cambie a Chrome y fue peor saludos

By Cynthia D S

Jul 26, 2020

Excellent material. Excellent content. The only reason I did not give this 5 stars was due to QwikLabs which are an astronomical waste of time. I finally found the problem. I did not need a workaround; the chat people are very friendly and entirely not helpful. Sadly, the problem is a simple one and lies directly with QwikLab and connecting to the Secure Shell. No one at Coursera and no one at QwikLab seems to care. The student is left on their own to try to figure it out on their own. After an astronomical 40 hours, I realized QwikLab's error. Otherwise I would give the course 5 stars.

By Christopher M

Jul 29, 2018

I learned a bunch of new material in this course! I am especially happy with the labs at the end. Finally, a challenging lab. I actually had to use my head and my notes. I find the walk through labs interesting and helpful, but not nearly as much as having to try and figure things out based on what I was taught. My only gripes are the instruction seems to breeze past or gloss over certain details while going through things and there is an awful lot of "suggested reading" of things that probably should be covered. I hope to see more on those things, as promised in the videos, in the next courses.

By Michael L

May 23, 2021

This course is great and you will learn a lot of things. The course is 5/5 on material. However, several portions of the graded tests from the middle onward are broken in ways that require you to fix it yourself. This means if you're not mildly familiar with untaught troubleshooting on your own, that you will end up stuck somewhere here and have no way of understanding why. I think this is unfair for the newbies, and for the extra time it takes and trouble it makes for everyone else. But it is rewarding overall nonetheless even if you don't get extra credit for working around those problems.

By Griffin G

Apr 1, 2021

Much of this course I already knew, though I did learn a few new tricks along the way. However the final was a bit aggravating, as it expects you to do everything in perfect order without any instructions or actual end goals, the only way to find out your actual goals, is to revert to previous labs for a turn by turn instruction and completion, which is time consuming and stressful. If they simply included/refreshed us on what specific goals were needed (i.e. delete the corrupt file, grant write access to all users for super_secret_file) it would be tremendously helpful.

By Justin W

Apr 3, 2019

Check those last two labs(Windows and Linux Logs) for grading errors. I completed all of the assigned tasks, but only received a score of 80% for each lab. I completed both of the final labs a second time, and still only received an 80% score. All of the tasks to be completed in these labs are simple, and I know that I completed everything correctly, as I've been an IT Support Manager for 5 years now, and a Support Specialist for 10 years prior, and have performed all of the tasks in these labs about 300 times. Something is wrong with the Qwiklab grading system...

By Vincent G

Apr 19, 2023

I had tremendous technical difficulties with this course's labs, which were FINALLY overcome. But it's been immensely enjoyable attaining these new skills and knowledge about operating systems. It's been very hard work but alot of fun and tutor Cindy puts this complex material across so amazingly well. I did feel so much was crammed into so short a space but it's very hard to put all this stuff together for newbies. The pace has to quicken at some point and this, half way through the scholarship has to be the point where it happens. Thanks everyone :)

By Todd R

Oct 27, 2022

I got 120 pages of notes after the first three courses in this google IT certificate thus far. I really liked the part where they mention full primary hard drives and their effects on the laptop. I have seen that before. Someone was trying to print and nothing came out. An IT guy mentioned that , so I looked and noticed the customer had a 99% full disk. It was a known problem that the customer did nothing about. He wouldn't listen to IT's advice and they have a standard laptop that everyone gets, so they couldn't do anything special for him.

By Wm. T W

Dec 2, 2020

I enjoyed the class and found that it covered a ton of information (thank the gods for OneNote). My only issue is that is seemed like Linux was often sort of tacked on to the program. We would spend 7 minutes of more going over how to do something in Windows and then Linux would barely get 2.

Now, I realize that some of this is because WIN is so common out there and because Linux can simply be easier to use once you understand some commands, but, if I wanted to learn Linux by studying web sites and trying to work it out, I would have done that.

By Brooke F

Jun 19, 2018

I wish more examples (even if a quick in passing example) as to how some of this stuff will be used, or is important. Having never worked with a virtual machine I still don't know why that would necessarily come in handy when I think about my experience in Corporate America. Overall a lot of really good information but I wish more of the Linux labs were like the last one. I struggle the most with CLI and Bash. Having the chance to use my brain and being guided a bit better to figuring out some of these commands would have been nice.

By Matt M

Jan 19, 2019

Finally, they start to deliver on some of the "we'll talk about that in a later video" that were given out like candy back in Course 1. Not too sure why they chose to use powershell for the windows command-line classes. Surely, it'd be easier to just teach linux and say 'also, most of these commands work in windows powershell'. Also, several of the videos could be combined together. combine creating directories, and files, with deleting and renaming directories and files. Only benefit to breaking them up is a touch of suspense.

By Sandra E

Aug 2, 2020

This course was amazing! So many useful tools in Windows and Linux to troubleshoot problems! Highly recommend taking this course to become a power user.

My only problem, is that I don't own a Windows PC so hands on practice was challenging. If you want the most out of this course, I would STRONGLY suggest to use a Window 10 machine. That way to can play around with the many tools provided for you in this course. Oh! and downloading Linux too! I've been using a Mac to take the course, but I just don't get enough hands on :(

By Connor K

Jun 26, 2023

When I first embarked on this course, I did not realize how intense the material was going to be for me. I knew there was going to be a great deal of challenges for me but I somehow feel in awe that I have completed this course. I felt the material presented was thorough for me to be able to understand and apply for the labs. I will say that it it is not something that you can just skim through at all. You gotta keep yourself in the zone to know what you're being expected to know for any professional career in IT.

By Kingsley O

Apr 4, 2021

Really good course. Using the Virtual Machines for the graded tasks allowed for handson experience especially the last part leading to the conclusion as it pushes you to remember all what had been taught from the preceding modules. Simply fantastic! I find it really good working with the both the CLI and Bash commands on my computers alongside the Instructor. The only part that was really difficult working with was the VMs for windows in the external tool. Overall, it was a very good learning experience for me.

By John O R

May 20, 2020

I would have loved to have given 5 stars but the instructor needs to improve her delivery. There were too many times she should type something in a command line without speaking and then hit enter before I could see what she typed.

I also wished that I had the files on my system that she was playing with in the CL so I could play along with her. (I am pretty sure that I am not the only person who needs to learn this way)

It also would have been nice to been give cheat sheets in a handout for the CL commands.

By Darve H

Feb 15, 2022

I enjoyed the course and the material was well presented. I had a problem with some of the later labs. I could not complete a couple fo the labs because the Powershell would not work for me. Also, the final Linux lab would not score properly for me.

Otherwise, this was a good experience. I have to commend the poor support staff that had to put up with me as I struggle with the lab problems in this course. They were all patient, kind and supportive; even when some of the errors were obviously user errors.