years to come.Initially, you might be tempted to think of the command line as the product of
some sort of black and arcane art; in some ways, it can appear to be extremely
difficult and complicated to use. However, with a little perseverance, by the
end of this chapter, you will start to feel comfortable using the command line,
and you’ll be ready to move on to Chapter 11, “Command-Line Master Class,
Part 1,” and Chapter 12, “Command-Line Master Class, Part 2.”
This chapter introduces you to commands that enable you to perform the
following:
Routine tasks—Logging in and out, changing passwords, listing and
navigating file directories
Basic file management—Creating files and folders, copying or moving
them around the file system, renaming and deleting them
Basic system management—Shutting down or rebooting, changing file
permissions, and reading man pages, which are entries for commands
included as files already on your computer in a standardized manual
formatThe information in this chapter is valuable for individual users and system
administrators who are new to Linux and are learning to use the command
line for the first time.
TIP
If you have used a computer for many years, you have probably come into
contact with MS-DOS, in which case being presented with a black screen
will fill you with a sense of nostalgia. Don’t get too comfy; the command
line in Linux is different from (and actually more powerful than) its distant
MS-DOS cousin. Even cooler is that whereas MS-DOS skills are
transferable only to other MS-DOS environments, the skills you learn at the
Linux command line can be transferred easily to other UNIX and UNIX-
like operating systems, such as Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and even
macOS, which provides access to the terminal.Accessing the Command Line
You can quickly access the terminal by using the desktop menu option
Terminal. This opens gnome-terminal, from which you can access the
terminal while remaining in a GUI environment. This time, the terminal
appears as white text on an aubergine (dark purple) background. This is the