Running Linux, Third Edition

Chapter 4. Basic Unix Commands and Concepts

If you’ve come to Linux from MS-DOS or another non-Unix operating system, you have a steep learning curve ahead of you. We might as well be candid on this point. Unix is a world all its own.

In this chapter, we’re going to introduce the rudiments of Unix for those readers who have never had exposure to this operating system. If you are coming from MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, or other environments, the information in this chapter will be absolutely vital to you. Unlike other operating systems, Unix is not at all intuitive. Many of the commands have seemingly odd names or syntax, the reasons for which usually date back many years to the early days of this system. And, although many of the commands may appear to be similar to their MS-DOS counterparts, there are important differences.

There are dozens of other books that cover basic Unix usage. You should be able to go to the computer section of any chain bookstore and find at least three or four of them on the shelf. (A few we like are listed in the Bibliography.) However, most of these books cover Unix from the point of view of someone sitting down at a workstation or terminal connected to a large mainframe, not someone who is running their own Unix system on a personal computer.

Also, these books often dwell upon the more mundane aspects of Unix: boring text-manipulation commands, such as awk, tr, and sed, most of which you will never need unless you get into doing some serious Unix trickery. ...