The Linux Command Line - 13.07

    Type: E-Book

Why Use The Command Line?
Have you ever noticed in the movies when the “super hacker,” — you know, the guy who can break into the ultra-secure military computer in under thirty seconds — sits down at the computer, he never touches a mouse? It's because movie makers realize that we, as human beings, instinctively know the only way to really get anything done on a computer is by typing on a keyboard!
Most computer users today are only familiar with the graphical user interface (GUI) and have been taught by vendors and pundits that the command line interface (CLI) is a terrifying thing of the past. This is unfortunate, because a good command line interface is a marvelously expressive way of communicating with a computer in much the same way the written word is for human beings. It's been said that “graphical user interfaces make easy tasks easy, while command line interfaces make difficult tasks possible” and this is still very true today.
Since Linux is modeled after the Unix family of operating systems, it shares the same rich heritage of command line tools as Unix. Unix came into prominence during the early 1980s (although it was first developed a decade earlier), before the widespread adoption of the graphical user interface and, as a result, developed an extensive command line interface instead. In fact, one of the strongest reasons early adopters of Linux chose it over, say, Windows NT was the powerful command line interface which made the “difficult tasks possible.”

What This Book is about
This book is a broad overview of “living” on the Linux command line. Unlike some books that concentrate on just a single program, such as the shell program, bash, this book will try to convey how to get along with the command line interface in a larger sense. How does it all work? What can it do? What's the best way to use it?
This is not a book about Linux system administration. While any serious discussion of the command line will invariably lead to system administration topics, this book only touches on a few administration issues. It will, however, prepare the reader for additional study by providing a solid foundation in the use of the command line, an essential tool for any serious system administration task.
This book is very Linux-centric. Many other books try to broaden their appeal by including other platforms such as generic Unix and OS X. In doing so, they “water down” their content to feature only general topics. This book, on the other hand, only covers contemporary Linux distributions. Ninety-five percent of the content is useful for users of other Unix-like systems, but this book is highly targeted at the modern Linux command line user.

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