TerminalDrill

I’ve been giving TerminalDrill’s Expanded workspace a more coherent native interface. On the Mac, the editor, terminal and task can sit together; on iPad they share the available space, while iPhone keeps each step focused. Saving a file, running a command and checking the result still mean different things.

The newer work also makes flashcards available directly from a track, improves command entry around the phone keyboard and gives the Mac wider, resizable panes. I want a longer practice session to feel as natural as the short daily drill.

These are development changes. The screenshots show build 17, captured on 21 October; newer work is still going through internal delivery and testing. The original iOS app remains available, while the redesigned workspace needs more testing before a public release.

TerminalDrill is growing beyond a list of command exercises, but I still want the familiar app to have a permanent home. The new Original and Expanded workspaces let me keep both. Original retains Today, Drill, Path, Codex and Profile. Expanded brings subjects, study routes, a scoped reference and longer practice together. Switching shares the same progress and purchases, rather than starting a second learning record.

The important distinction is between browsing and choosing what to study. I can look around Linux, Shell, Git, Containers, Kubernetes and Ansible without changing my focus; Use this focus makes that a deliberate decision. RHCSA material sits alongside an introductory LPIC-1 route that shows its coverage gaps. New Kubernetes and Ansible exercises let me repair a small authored scenario entirely inside the app. They are bounded simulations, with their limitations visible.

I have also spent time making unfinished work worth returning to. A lab keeps an unsaved editor buffer separate from its machine files; Run, Save file and Check work mean different things. Saved sessions and drafts can be inspected, exported and resumed, including work displaced by another attempt. On iPhone the task, terminal and files have their own panes, while the iPad and Mac give them more room.

The broader curriculum is still growing, and I want independent review of the preview labs. I’m keeping reading, recall and applying a command separate: recognising an answer and working out a repair are different things to practise.

After the Mac beta and practical labs, I have been trying another way to make daily practice feel inviting. Adventure turns Today into a mission board, with short review, fictional incidents and an accomplishment to work towards. The character profile collects earned titles and small homelab keepsakes. Classic is still the default, and switching keeps the same learning progress.

The weekly goal can be one, three or five practice days, without demanding consecutive days. Lab receipts distinguish guided participation from an independent first solution, and repeating a completed variant cannot keep paying out the same reward. It is an experiment in motivation; the extra presentation does not turn preview labs into proof of professional competence.

The most useful follow-up was a debugging pass. Simulated standard output and errors now stay separate through pipes and scripts, same-file redirection behaves like the real shell, and equivalent octal permissions are graded consistently. Session results also stop describing a visible-answer or hinted response as strong independent recall. iPad Reference selection and retry-aware resume counts received fixes too.

I checked those fixes with automated tests, simulator sessions and a Mac practice walkthrough, then uploaded 5.3.1 build 14 for iPhone, iPad and Mac on 29 September. I haven’t yet confirmed that processing has finished or that the builds are available to the testing groups.

TerminalDrill has always fitted into a few spare minutes on a phone. With longer lessons and practical labs arriving, I also wanted to use it sitting at a keyboard. The Mac beta brings Today, Practice, Tracks, Reference and Progress into a sidebar, with more room for the work itself.

The latest Mac TestFlight build is 5.2 (11). This round also fixed a crash when starting practice. It is still a beta: the Mac version has not been released on the App Store.

A command can be familiar without the task around it being familiar. That is the gap I am working on with the RHCSA expansion: learning what to inspect, choosing a change, and checking whether it worked.

The track now brings together 83 lessons, chapter labs and six capstones, with topics such as permissions, services, storage, networking and SELinux. The labs keep track of the simulated machine as you work, so a change affects what the next command sees. Each has a guide for practising on your own disposable Linux system.

This week also added practical labs to the wider tracks. I have been comparing behaviour against a real RHEL machine, but independent practitioner review is still pending. The labs stay labelled as development previews; this is a practice companion, not a promise of exam readiness.

The expansion is included for existing Full Access owners. The pricing model is staying the same.