Shell commands and info
From ITCH
Contents |
Shell
'Simply put, the shell is a program that takes your commands from the keyboard and gives them to the operating system to perform. In the old days, it was the only user interface available on a Unix computer. Nowadays, we have graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in addition to command line interfaces (CLIs) such as the shell.
On most Linux systems a program called bash (which stands for Bourne Again SHell, an enhanced version of the original Bourne shell program, sh, written by Steve Bourne) acts as the shell program. There are several additional shell programs available on a typical Linux system. These include: ksh, tcsh and zsh.' Text taken from http://www.linuxcommand.org/lts0010.php (What is the Shell?)
Learning the Shell The following guides are very helpful and I would suggest the first as a way of familiarising yourself with the environment, the second to actually get in there and start doing stuff and the third as a way of patching your knowledge or confidence.
1 http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/shell.html
2 http://linuxcommand.gds.tuwien.ac.at/learning_the_shell.php
3 http://www.physics.ubc.ca/mbelab/computer/linux-intro/html/basics.html
Command Line and Blind Users
http://www.eklhad.net/cli.html This is a link to Karl Dalke's paper with persuasive arguments for encouraging blind users to use the command line rather than GUI.
This is another paper on a similar theme Linux - A Viable Alternative For The Blind? By Saqib Shaikh <ss@saqibshaikh.com>
One major reason that a visually impaired individual can use Linux is that network connectivity is built in to the operating system and provides full access to the Internet from the non-graphical interface. All visible text on the screen can be translated using a screen reader and speech synthesizer.
Terminals
In KDE- KDE Konsole Terminal In Gnome Colour Xterm Gnome Terminal Bash
Tips on Using the Console
You can use the mouse for scroll bars and to select text. Use the middle button to copy
Commands
Useful link to Bash commands http://www.ss64.com/bash/
pwd print working directory
cd change directory
ls list files and directories
ls -a list file names which begin with period character
Home directory listed if just ls typed in.
Misc useful info
The focus can be changed in the Window manager behaviour console centre and can be routed to the mouse.
less view text files
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