[Nottingham] newbie Hi!

[Godfrey Nix]

On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 06:06 -0800, Dallas Phone waterpump wrote:
> Hi All,
>  
> Recently installed SUSE linux 10 as a dual boot with WinXP (yes I
> know, wash your mouth...). Took me a while as there were issues with
> the video/graphics card I was using, but all is working now, except
> the wireless modem and the phone modem....
>  
> Seems you need a degree in command line programming to really get to
> grips with Linux and in this area I could really use some help.

Just a few pointers to start you on your way -

Most commands are shortened names, or play on words
ls      will LiSt the files in a directory (folder in WindowsSpeak)
pwd     prints the current (working) directory
cd      Change Directory
more    split output one screenfull at a time ('space' to continue)
less    just like more, but can go backwards as well as forwards
grep    search for a character string in a file
diff    show differences between files
free    show the usage of memory (and swap file, if used)
df      display disk usage
mv      move a file or directory
cp      copy a file or directory
rm      remove/delete a file
rmdir   remove a directory
cat     short for conCATenate, echo one or more files to screen

and the most helpful of all, is 'man' ! This is short for 'manual' (as
in, read the friendly manual - RTFM). It takes one argument (parameter)
which is the command that you want to read about, so we could give
man perl     # to read about perl
man sh       # read about the shell interpreter that you are using

When you open a terminal session, all that you type is handled by the
'shell' which will either do the command if it is a built-in function,
or will start a program running. Builtin commands include 'cd', 'echo'
and 'pwd', whereas 'ftp' and 'perl' are external programs (also called
executable files).

External programs can be run by giving the full path to the program, or
just by the program name only (provided that the path to the program is
included in the list of searchable paths; give command
   echo $PATH
to see what paths will be searched. Of course, if you do not know where
a program is, then you will need to ask -
   whereis perl    # to find the location of 'perl'
On the other hand, 
    locate perl    # will find files that contain 'perl' in their names

You can send the output of one program to the input of another, using
'pipe', the | character, or send to a file using the redirect '>', like
this:
   cat file1 file2 file3 | grep 'home' > linescontaininghome.txt

Hope this is enough to be getting on with.



> 
-- 
Godfrey Nix <godfrey at gnnix.co.uk>