Can someone tell me something about learning from the "Info bash" on the console . I just managed to move around and i would like to know about it's importance for someone that don't have a clue on linux like myself. I mean would you recomend it , and , if you please, where does it really stand on linux learning.It looks like those who did where dead serious about it .


PEACE

what do you want to learn? anything in particular? i use info bash when i can figure something out.

jason

I actually don't have a specific topic , i want to know more about linux in general . It seems that most of sites and books material i went through are assuming that you have the skills to understand wich i don't .
Are shells important to the new linuxers?
what are their utility?



FIAT LINUX

This is a fairly decent analogy. BASH is the "equivelant" of DOS prompt or DOS command line. I don't know how much time you've spent there, but DOS was the actual operating system years gone by. Now windows rides on top and in NT it uses it's own platform. The similarities are in the facts that it allows you to move around and perform your operating system functions. To list the directory contents, instead of DIR (which works though) it's 'ls'. Bash and other "shells" all perform system functions and that's pretty much it. X as the old windows did, "rides" on top of linux as a server. The shells are definately important, without them you don't have Linux. As the 'kernel' is the core of a Linux system, the shells are the access to that core. That's how i'd explain it. Someone may be able to give you a better explaination...Hope it helped some either way.

Sorry for double-posting...If in doubt. Start with the 'man'ual pages. At the console prompt try typing something like

man ls, man bash, man cp (copy funtion good to know) etc...

this seems kinda stupid, but go to the bookstore and get 'Complete Idiots Guide to UNIX'. Its only $17US. It was the best investment I made to learn the basics of shell.

and you can always post here or search though old posts to figure someting out.

good luck and have fun,
jason

thanks . I would like to ask you if there's any real damage than can happen if you mess with the console to learn about the commands, syntaxe , and so on ?

PS: Is there a way to erase all the input you typed on the console before you close the session ? Are there commands that shouldn't be messed with "unless you know what you're doing" ?

PEACE

Unless you are root (which you shouldn't be for experimenting), or important bits of the system are world writable (which they shouldn't be), the the worst that can happen is that you blow away your data files and user configuration files.

Not really, as I said above your system should be secure enough that you wouldn't be able to run any commands like that, or if you could they wouldn't be able to do any damage.