I am a student and I need to figure out what some commands in Linux do.
 

Hello. I am wanting to get to a Linux terminal without loading it onto my Windows system. I need to find out what several commands do. I know the simplest way to do this is to just put the commands on a virtual terminal and see what they do. But I am afraid that I will do some kind of damage to my laptop.

My question: Is there a terminal that I can get to online to test the commands I need to.

Since Linux commands won't work in Windows, I doubt there's any damage the commands could do. You can run Linux in a virtual environment in Windows, and you can also just look up the command man pages online.
http://www.linuxmanpages.com/

Ideally I would say installing Linux in a virtual machine is the way to go -- it allows "playing" even when you're not on the internet and lets you do more than you'd likely get with a free telnet session.
That said somebody might know of a free public server that allows some playing.

What kinds of commands? I would probably just install Cygwin on your Windows machine. It's a regular Windows program that gives you a Linux-like shell. The vast majority of commands will work the same as on Linux, but there are some subtle differences...so whether or not it will work depends on what you need to test. Other than that, you could install a Linux distro as a virtual machine using something like VirtualBox. Neither of these approaches will harm your computer, you can always just uninstall them when you're done.

As the others advised, you would do well to install Linux on a virtual machine, or an old computer you don't need for anything important. I don't know what "commands" you want to test...generally we don't run terminal commands without good reason. The "commands" you're talking are actually shell commands (probably bash, that is the most common), not "Linux commands). The syntax is pretty common to all unix-like system.

http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml and/or http://ss64.com/bash/

Thanks guys
 

Thanks so much for your answers! Guyonearth, you are right they are BASH commands. I really appreciate the help. I don't think I will have any trouble with my homework when I get off work.

Thanks Again to Everyone:newbie:

If you need to find out what a particular command does then the first place to start is

You can also try a LiveCD: this runs Linux direct from the CD/DVD without touching your HDD.
Have a look here www.distrowatch.com

Most (if not all) Linux distributions come with these manual pages installed, but you can also find man pages online. You can do a web search using something like linux man pages, or you can also type the man [command] in your browser and you'll probably get hits for the correct man page, like I just did with man ls. So you have that resource available if you can't access the man pages from a running Linux installation.