look this is just how it is. i am straight from windows. i know windows and even dos like the back of my hand. i wan to learn linux/unbutu. i want to learn. but right off the bat i amn lost. i wanted to install cisco packet tracer and it turned out to be the most difficult thing i could ever imagine. but i did learn it. but in general i am lost. "terminal" what like telnet? i am lost. is there any good general direction out there?

A Terminal is jsut a command prompt window. It's in your menus if you look. the icon is a screen with >_ on it.

Packet Tracer is going to be a weird thing to install compared to everything else certainly. Note though that as it's Cisco software you should really be following their own installation guides.

If you installed a relatively uncommon app on Linux, and made it work, then you are definitely not "lost".

"general direction"?----sure, there's plenty, but the best thing is to ask specific questions.

No...telnet is a protocol for connecting to other computers. Windows has a terminal (you know Windows-R, then "cmd") and Linux has a terminal. The difference of course is the that the Linux terminal gives you access to a plethora of useful stuff...

Give us some idea as to how you plan to use Linux, and what specific things are not working for you

To be fair to him and Windows, there is a "powershell" which would be semi-comparable to to the Linux Shell.

@mchstream, you should check out some intro videos on youtube or read up some tutorials, google is your friend.

ty for the info. it was so funny though. never thought about linux in the past; but just tried ubuntu and realized how lost i have really been. so glad ur hear.

Why would I want to be fair with Windows??....
Seriously, I'd be amazed if there's any CLI in Windows that even **approaches** the power of BASH and all the other "Unix" utilities. Why would there be--------where's the market?

Because being unfair makes you look like a zealot.

There is, it is called PowerShell. It's major advantage besides having features a real shell should have is that you can make use of the complete .Net evironment.
Its use is of course the server market and the administration of large amounts of Windows systems in the corporate environment.

First try using tcpdump on linux and once you master it than try the cisco packet tracer. There are many tutorials you can find on google for tcpdump.
Hope this helps

Relax--I was joking.
OK---I will accept that I did not know this---is it really as good as the traditional Unix environment?

To answer that one needs your definition of "Shell". Is it the pure shell (Bash/Zsh/whatever) or does it include the environment (like the GNU or BSD toolset)?

When I speak of the CLI environment I mean BASH + the range of utilities that typically [comes with | is readily available for] a Linux distro. I'm aware of the huge ambiguity in this.

Another way to get at this: What kinds of things are available in Powershell that one would not expect to find in a Linux or Unix environment?

Here's one that I keep running into: In Windows, to unzip things, they want you to BUY Winzip. In Linux, you just use gunzip or the "z" flag in tar. I can tar, untar, zip and unzip, and bzip and bunzip faster than I can even try to remember what the windows equivalents are....

Zip functionality is built in since Windows XP, also there are many freeware tools to deal with that functionality, like 7zip.

As stated above, you can do anything that can be done with the .Net framework, from networking over database and system diagnostics to the IO-functions of the framework and even the accessibility and UI functions. Too much to describe, a complete overview of the .Net framework can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...v=VS.100).aspx

Now let's stop to derail this thread.

OK

waiting for more questions from the OP.......