THE CONSOLE / TERMINAL

All the tasks we do on the commandline are done in a "dos-window", in Linux we call it a "Shell", "Console" or "Terminal" ( the name depends on the distro you use, Terminal is used in RedHat, Console in Mandrake ).
As you start up a Console ( look in your menu ) you will be presented with a “prompt“, this prompt will end with a $, this means that you are logged in as a normal user.

Once you type "su" and give your root password the $ will change in a #, indicating that you are root.
Ctrl+d will log you out as root and bring you back to $, if you do a Ctrl+d again the console will close.

( A normal prompt will look like: [localhost@localdomain:~]$ Not very spectecular, but later in The Tips we will start tweaking your prompt into something fancy, but the $ and # will always stay the same )

For nearly every program or command there are “man”-ual pages stored on your computer. You can read them by typing "man man", this will give you the man pages for the command man. "man cp" will give you the man pages for the command cp. The spacebar lets you scroll the page. With "q" you close the man pages !
More info than the man pages can often be found by typing "--help" after the command. See "cp --help" gives a different result then "man cp".