Installation

Requirements

Requirement	Detail
Shell	Bash 3.2 or higher
OS	Linux (any distro), macOS, or Windows (via WSL or Git Bash)
Dependencies	None: pure Bash, no external tools needed
Disk	~60 KB for the script

Note

macOS ships Bash 3.2 by default (due to GPL licensing). BashQuest is fully compatible with 3.2+. If you have Bash 5 via Homebrew, it works there too.

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Windows

BashQuest is pure Bash, so it needs a Bash shell to run in, Windows doesn’t ship one natively. Two good options:

WSL (recommended) — a real Linux environment inside Windows, so everything just works exactly as it does on Linux:

wsl --install

Reboot if prompted, open the “Ubuntu” app from your Start menu, then follow the one-liner install below inside it.

Git Bash — lighter weight, no reboot needed. Install Git for Windows (BashQuest doesn’t need Git itself, just the Bash environment it ships with), then open “Git Bash” from the Start menu and follow the same steps below.

Either way, once you’re inside a Bash prompt, the rest of this page is identical.

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One-liner Install

curl -o bashquest.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hardlygospel/bashquest/main/bashquest.sh \
  && chmod +x bashquest.sh \
  && bash bashquest.sh

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Manual Install

1. Download the script

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hardlygospel/bashquest/main/bashquest.sh

Or with wget:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hardlygospel/bashquest/main/bashquest.sh

2. Make it executable

chmod +x bashquest.sh

3. Run it

bash bashquest.sh

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Install System-wide (optional)

To run bashquest from anywhere:

sudo mv bashquest.sh /usr/local/bin/bashquest
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/bashquest

# Then just run:
bashquest

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Save Data Location

BashQuest saves all user accounts and progress to ~/.bashquest/:

~/.bashquest/
├── users.db          # hashed credentials (username:md5hash)
├── alice.save        # Alice's level/XP/lives
└── bob.save          # Bob's progress

To reset your progress, delete your .save file:

rm ~/.bashquest/yourname.save

To reset everything (all users):

rm -rf ~/.bashquest/

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Updating

# Re-download over the existing file
curl -o bashquest.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hardlygospel/bashquest/main/bashquest.sh

# Your save data in ~/.bashquest/ is untouched