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

4.7
stars
27,057 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

JA

Jun 21, 2019

Great course, lots of very challenging and useful information. You'll learn about Linux and some of the inner workings of Windows, plus lots of tools and programs that are really useful. Great course!

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1 - 25 of 5,251 Reviews for Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User

By Brandon M

Mar 27, 2018

Unfortunately I have to rate this course rather low due to the nature of the labs. The information and the instructor were great and deserve a 5 star rating. Cindy was very well spoken and knowledgable about the topics that were covered. I'm not sure who has a stake in Qwiklabs (if anyone at all), but the labs that you are required to take as part of the quizzes for this particular course are just flat out poorly implemented. To begin with, for several weeks I was unable to participate in the labs - often having to wait 24-72 hours just to get in at all. I was continually getting the "Due to overwhelming response" error. There was no possible way that all of the labs were "full" constantly around the clock for days on end. This error persisted for around 2 weeks. I am paying $50 a month for this service, and to me, this error is unacceptable. Then there was the issue of labs not recognizing the tasks that were completed. For some of the labs the "fix" to this issue was waiting up to 30 minutes just to begin them to ensure the VM instance was fully loaded. This is another unacceptable error for a service I'm paying a lot of money for. The idea and the concept of the labs running through a VM instance is brilliant, but the implementation of these labs through the Qwiklabs portal was without a doubt a fumble on somebody's part, and quite frankly based on this one course alone I could not recommend anyone to sign up for the Google IT certificate unless the Qwiklabs issues would be rectified.

By Tomasz K

Apr 22, 2018

Lecturer was terrible! So far the worst experience I have had in this certificate. This person would even bore the dead. Not to mention the whole plan of the course: it was chaotic, jumping from easy tasks to more complicated without enough explanation being done and some points were just awful. The best thing you can do here is to just read transcript below video and read, read and once again read additional materials. You will hardly learn anything here. The only good thing were two last labs, but they were grade with 0% weight value.

By Mickael D

Jun 23, 2019

Great course spoiled by the Qwicklab system.

Could not get graded even several attempts. There is an obvious issue as many students complain about Qwicklab issue for several months.

By YB2

Dec 17, 2018

First of all, this course has many improvement points I want to share, along with the reason why the course is just horrible and misleading. It was a manifold of sensations, feeling in "Sesame Street" is most flattering thing I could ever say about this course. The course is focused on IT Support Specialist role development, that being said I don't consider useful to learn how to create a folder in windows. Google guys, please. The topics are poorly designed, basically I would expect more accurate examples of real components when explaining tricky concepts. The instructor demonstrated that she doesn't have much experience on Linux topics and some operating systems related terms; for example, she totally ignores that Linux has a versioning system whereas the entire kernel is not always updated, uses the term "Archive" to call out both archive and compression formats (which is not the same), makes up a misleading distinction between DPKG and APT (package management part), and knows only monolithic kernels (it's worth mentioning micro kernels as well, don't you think?). The last thing I wanted to add, please, explain a concept before introducing it (yes, we were using Windows PowerShell commands to later realize that they are called "CMDLETS"). Guys, this is my sincere review, I am interested in the certificate from Google after the 5 courses, and just finished suffering this course. Thanks!

By Leonard W

Jul 9, 2018

Broken labs with confusing instructions and literally zero way to ask for help. Help center is broken. I've resorted to using the forums to get through assignments. This is one of the worst online courses I have ever taken.

By Jon C C

Feb 23, 2018

Final lab exercise is so vague and buggy. Stock at 20/50. Kindly revise the end lab exercise.

By Daniel H

Oct 25, 2019

Course was good and challenging. Cindy did a great job. I wish Windows and Linux were separated instead of back and forth every video change though. It made things confusing going back and forth.

By Maribel R

Apr 24, 2020

i am so sorry to say, but this course did not had a logical structure, the instructions where all scramble up, it was really difficult to understand and follow. I could hardly understand what she was explaining, the video capture at some instances, were so small and at the end of the video page, so sometimes i could not see was she was written in the command prompt at the velocity of the speed. That's other point, ,she writes so quickly and hits enter, and does not allow to study or copy the command, iAh, in the written part of the video, it was all a soup of letters, so i could not copy the commands either. So, you now how I learn? trough the outside test instruction, that when I learn something. you can even check my response, straight to the test and in week 6, I did not even saw the videos directly to the test. this course need to be revised and structure like the other courses before this one. a lot of material, all scramble up, with out structure. So sad. :(

By TJ H

Mar 2, 2018

I am in week 5 of this course and not only have I contacted "support" (there is no number so you have to submit a ticket), who will email you from about 5 different people telling you how to "troubleshoot" the problem and insist that YOU are doing the qwiklabs wrong, only to have you're labs marked as Incomplete until after the weekly "due date". this has happened 3 weeks in a row, you have to threaten to not pay for the course for any action what-so-ever to happen. its a joke

By Brian A

May 22, 2019

Videos are useful, labs are useless, poorly set up, and don't work most of the time. I am thinking twice about paying for this course.

By Buddy E O

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.

By Nicholas A R

Jan 19, 2020

There isn't much exercise material. There's nothing provided to help iron in all the things taught in these lessons, and there is A LOT of material. Which mean most of what you teach is just in one ear and out the other. And the stuff you did teah is so horridly taught. You can't just be like, "Oh by the way, this concept exists and you should know about it. Here's a link to wikipedia with hours of text" Because if we wanted to read wikipedia entries to learn all this we'd find a study and google it ourselves. We're paying YOU to teach US what we need to know. Don't just give us "the basics". Furthermore, you say you want us to run and write these commands down with you but a lot of times you barely, and I mean BARELY give us enough time to even pause the video to look at the full command. Speaking of which, you need to break down the commands for us. This is a BEGINNERS course. When you need to tell us what the structure of a command is. You can't just give us a command like "sudo dd if=/devsdd of=~/desktop/" and not break it down. If the videos are 10 to 20 minutes long who cares? Because I personally spent well over a hour on a lot of videos reading up on the topics you so terribly covered.

By Che V F

Jun 28, 2018

The promise you upon completion you will be given the option to advertise your certificate to various companies. That is not true. I finished and got the certificate after completing all the 6 courses for about 5months. There is no option to make your certificates accessible to the suppose companies folks. It is a goose chase. Don't fall for it

By sam z

Feb 19, 2018

your lab is beyond stupid, how smart people like you made so many stupid mistakes, only answer is that you are ignorant and greed, you deserve to die as a company

By Sehan P

Feb 15, 2019

Issues with Quicklabs not letting tasks be completed on time, otherwise the course material is taught at a suitable pace and clarity. Do not join this course

By Mohned D

May 24, 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

By Janice B

Dec 28, 2020

This course was very informative and challenging. I really appreciate the way the course was put together. It would be ore helpful if the links to the readings were from material other than Wikipedia.

By Karim S

Feb 12, 2020

This has been a mixed bag. The course material itself was very good and the presentation was good. However the Qwiklabs malfunctioning for all of the windows labs during this period and the lack of communication and problem solving by the course admin has left me deeply disappointed with this course.

Update: Adjusted to four stars. Qwiklabs problem solved and now finished the course. I feel a great level of relief after a somewhat stressful week. Had it not been for the Qwiklab problems I would have rated the course with a 5. I have learnt more new things in this course than others.

By Christina G

Jun 17, 2018

There is not enough time to pass the last 2 labs!! Ridiculous! And I mentioned this previously to try and get Help Support, but Help Support does not respond.

By Tyler W

Jan 21, 2020

Many of the QuikLabs instances in this lesson will make you want to tear your eyes out. You will likely need to open and close each final lab 2 or 3 times to get it to run the way it needs to in order to be scored. Once you get it to run, your instructions may be VERY vague. This isn't a problem, except the grading algorithm is VERY SPECIFIC, and needs tasks to be executed in ONE of the 4,000 ways each of us knows how to complete any given OS task. (Week 6 Linux portion tells you [sudo] commands are required for _____ reason. The Windows instance gives no such advice, and thus you spend an hour or more bumbling around what would normally be a 10 minute chore list) If anything, the lesson here was "If you work in IT, don't set up a program like this."

By Ricardo P D

May 17, 2018

The labs on Windows never work well and the weight of the grades is completely repatriated in a week and a half of a total of 6 weeks. Probably an error that nobody has reviewed and so it seems no one will revise in the future. I have the feeling that once the courses are designed nobody reviews or worries about the problems that are in them. For the price we pay students, at least there should be someone reviewing these things.

By Erica J H

May 10, 2020

good speaker but the back and forth of linux and windows is confusing. The Quiklabs for this course are horrible and glichy

By Santos R G

Dec 4, 2019

I rate this course as the worst one yet, NOT because of the topics, instructor or even exam, but because of the horrible problem with the Finally LABS. This has been documented for over a year on the messages board, and Coursera, Google nor qwikLab have done NOTHING to address the issue. I think it a sign of disrespect to the students effort, time and money put towards improving their knowledge. I am disappointed with all three parties, how can you teach a course on IT , and NOT get your system corrected !

By Jonathan A

Jun 22, 2019

Great course, lots of very challenging and useful information. You'll learn about Linux and some of the inner workings of Windows, plus lots of tools and programs that are really useful. Great course!

By Andrew R

Jun 14, 2019

Personally, this was the best course by far! I really learned a lot about windows and Linux systems administration. Everything I have been wanting to learn (short of Linux+ and MCSE) has been facilitated in this course. I feel a tremendous amount of confidence moving forward in my studies and career. The course really helped to lay out the groundwork and get me (and others, I presume) prepared for additional industry certifications. Thank you Google and Coursera!