December 2000
Intermediate to advanced
800 pages
22h 41m
English
Content preview from Special Edition Using Linux®, Sixth Edition
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What Is a Shell?
To understand a shell, you need to understand a few terms; you also need to understand how you interact with the system (both hardware and other software) as a whole. Previously, you learned that Linux sees everything as nothing more than files (see Chapter 10, "Understanding the Linux Filesystem" ). Whether that file is ASCII text, binary instructions, a directory, or a special file that acts as a conduit to pass data to and from a piece of hardware, it is seen by the kernel as a file.
Looking at Figure 14.1, if you imagine that all the files on a disk go in the center circle—regardless of whether or not they represent hardware—it will be a little easier to understand what happens. After the kernel boots, it is in charge of ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.