They may think it’s too difficult or too much to remember. But once a user becomes accustomed to using the command line interface, it soon becomes the preferred method in many tasks. Not only is it much quicker to accomplish just about any given task at the command line, it opens a whole new world of possibilities. It allows the user to begin to understand how an operating system is structured and functions. It gives the user very powerful tools to do the things graphical interfaces will never be able to reproduce. And best of all, it’s just fun.

There are several shells, the interface between the user and the system, with their own set of built-in functions and commands. The most popular is probably Bash, which is an improved clone of the Unix Borne Shell. Not only does Bash include lots of handy built-in commands, but a user can execute (or fork) a multitude of other application executables from within it.

There is a short list of commands that one can learn to get started. With this short list, you can begin to build your toolbox and with the help of a few good reference sites, become a command line master yourself. Not only will this enable you to feel comfortable running just about any Linux distribution available, but every programmer working today began with that first command.

But how might one go about trying to use the dreaded command line? Once open, the user stares at the prompt wondering what to do first. They know folks work from the command line all day every day, but what do you do? Fortunately, you’re not on your own. There are a plethora of sites with all the information you’ll need to take you from beginner to advanced user or anywhere in between.

LinuxCommand

One of the best places to get started is LinuxCommand. This site gently introduces the first time user what a shell is and how to use it. Then, if desired, it will instruct the user on how to write their first shell scripts.

The homepage of this site is very relaxing. It merely shows an image of a terminal and reassures the user “Don’t worry, we’ll show you what to do.” Its Table of Contents addresses usage in an task oriented manner. Instead of listing the command and explaining what it does, it lists an operation one might want to perform.

For example, the first thing any user might want to learn is navigation. With a reference to the graphical hierarchy, it begins the user with the first babysteps of moving around their system with the command line.

Then one is taken on a tour of the Linux filesystem hierarchy and shown how to manipulate files such as renaming, moving, or deleting, and permissions. Once you learn this beginning information, you are already on your way to fixing a Linux system on which the Graphical User Interface is broken.

Next the site gets more involved walking the user through writing shell scripts, first easy then more and more complicated. If you finish this latter section, you are already almost a master.

O’Reilly’s Linux Command Directory

O’Reilly’s Linux Command Directory is a wonderful quick reference chart-like guide. This page lists not only the built-in commands, but also many little utilities commonly included in all Linux distributions. This is great for the beginner or even more advanced users as the listed commands are links to full information as to what the command is and how to use it.

While this information may be available right on your system as Main pages, it comes in handy for those who forgot the command or perhaps doesn’t know which to use. For example, you’d like the current system date and time, so you visit this page and see the command time. This must be it, so you click on it and find out that time is actually used to measure the elasped time of a given process. So, you know that isn’t it. Then you scroll down and spot date. Ah yes, that’s the one. What was that command to quickly check to see if a certain word or phrase is in a file? Oh yes, you remember now that you see the command grep listed.

By clicking it you’ll find all sorts of ways it can be manipulated to output just what you need. A favorite activity is just reading through the list for unfamiliar or forgotten commands and learning what they do. This is just a particularly handy site to bookmark.

The Linux Cookbook

The Linux Cookbook fits in somewhere between LinuxCommand’s Learning the Shell and Writing Shell Scripts. It takes the user from logging in to as deep as they want to go.

However, its best resource is its intermediate instruction. After learning a few commands one might want to know how to edit a file and the cookbook features introductions to common text editors.  It also tells a user things such as how to change their password, listing directories in color, and how to understand help files and documentation.

Later, it instructs on how to configure the X Windows System, how to start X, and all other aspects of using X.  Then it even goes further into using the graphical interface and includes things like audio, printing,  networking, and communications.  It basically gives the user a full overview of using Linux.

This site is the online version of a hard copy book sold in many stores and featured on Amazon. Once you complete this book and the LinuxCommand.org instruction, you’ll be a Linux Kung Fu Master.

Do you have any favourite websites for mastering the Linux command line?   If so, let us know about them in the comments.

Image Credit : Slashcrisis

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The command line lets you communicate directly with your computer and instruct it to perform various tasks. For this you have to use specific commands. The commands are not necessarily intuitive, so they have to be learned, just like words in a language. Fortunately, there are graphical user interfaces (GUIs) replacing most procedures that formerly required using the command line.

However, sometimes using the command line is quicker or even the only way to access certain information. Thus knowing how to use the command line can be extremely valuable. And that’s where this Windows command guide comes in.

To access the Windows command line in XP, click > START > Run, type cmd into the > Open: field, and click > OK.

Alternatively, you can go through > Start > All Programs > Accessories and select > command prompt.

This launches cmd.exe, a window that reminds us of the old days in computer history: pure white text on a uniform black background. Despite its resemblance to a DOS windows, cmd.exe merely is a command line interpreter merely similar to DOS.

Now that you have successfully accessed the command prompt, what is there to do here?

To operate at command prompt level, you need to know some commands. Let me give you some basics to play with.

Help

First let me say that there is intrinsic help in the command prompt. If you’re not sure whether a certain command really exists or what it does or what switches there are to it, type the command followed by a /? and you shall be enlightened.

Switches

Switches are optional extensions to a command, which change the command’s behavior. We actually saw an example of a switch in the previous section. /? is a switch to any command, explaining its function rather than executing it in any way.

Note that you can add several switches to each command, but always leave a space between the command and each switch.

Now let’s get on with serious commands.

dir

The dir command lists the contents of the current directory.

There are some useful switches to it. For example dir /d (/d being the switch) will list the directory contents in up to three columns. Alternatively, you can use dir /w, which will sort the contents differently. With dir /p the information doesn’t scroll, but pauses at the end of the screen, until you hit a random key for the next screen full of data.

cd

To change directories, use the cd command.

Pick a directory seen in the previous dir listing. Directories are indicated by <DIR> in the directory listing. For example type cd desktop and you will switch into the Desktop directory. Type cd.. to return to the previous directory. To go directly to a specific directory, rather than haggling your way through each single one, type in the entire path. Let’s say you went back to C:\> and want to return to the Desktop directory. Simply type cd documents and settings\administrator\desktop.

Note that switching between drives doesn’t require the cd command. Simply type in the respective drive letter and a colon, e.g. d: to switch.

mkdir

This one is used to make a directory, i.e. create a new directory. Type mkdir name to create a directory called name.

rmdir

To remove a directory, use this command. So that would be rmdir name to remove a directory called name. Only empty directories can be removed.

You can of course create and delete directories located in any other directory, you just have to specify the respective path in your command, starting from where you are.

For example mkdir documents and settings\administrator\test when you’re in C:\ or mkdir administrator\test if you’re already in the documents and settings directory.

del

This is the command to delete files. It works similar to the mkdir and rmdir commands. So you type del example.exe to delete the file example.exe in your directory. If you’re not already in the right directory, you add the respective path.

This was a short list of commands to make you familiar with the command line environment. For an entire list of commands, please refer to this list.

We will now look at some very helpful commands for tasks that can not easily be completed by any other means. For all of them you can use the /? switch, to find out what all you can do with these commands.

driverquery

For a list of all drivers installed on your system, driverquery is the quickest solution.

ping

Ping must be the most popular command line prompt. It’s used to check an IP address and see whether the respective computer is online or responding, i.e. whether network communication between your and that computer is possible.

ipconfig

Here you can reveal network data of your own computer, such as the name of your computer in the network, your IP address or your MAC address.

systeminfo

The command to retrieve extensive information about your system, including Windows serial number, computer model, and available RAM.

This Windows command guide can merely touch on the surface of what the command line can do. For more extensive information, please refer to The Command Line in Windows and PCStats’ WindowsXP Command Prompt Guide.

If you got hooked, you might want to check out the following MakeUseOf articles dealing with the command line. Varun wrote about 10 Windows Command Line Tips You Should Check Out and he introduced Nircmd – A Power Packed Command Line Tool. Mark explained how to Change the Windows User Password via Command Line.

What command do you find most useful?

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• 10 Windows Command Line Tips You Should Check Out (33)
• Top 3 Sites To Help You Become A Linux Command Line Master (20)
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Sadly there is no portable version of the application. It would have been an excellent tool to keep on your USB drive had there been a portable version available.

The commands or actions are categorized into sections displayed towards the left. There are as many as 70 actions that you can perform with Commands in Demand. We have to say though, that some of them are easier and quicker if done the conventional way!

Some of the salient features of the application are:

Tools to deal with non responsive applications. You can kill non responsive applications at the click of a button, it even lets you create a shortcut to do so, like we showed you some time back. You can restart Windows Explorer with a single click or fire the Task Manager to take things in your hand!

A real time clipboard editor that lets you edit the contents of the clipboard. It automatically reads the text on your clipboard and then you can edit it as you would do in notepad. You can also drag and drop additional text to add to the text already on your clipboard. Print from here, save to a file or paste anywhere and the updated text will be pasted at the destination.

A list alphabetizer application that lets you create a list, sort it and then create a directory structure according to the list. You can even read in the contents of a folder as a list and then perform various operations on the list. The files and folders section also allows you to quickly launch common folders or open command prompt in a said folder.

An icon extractor that can extract icons from exe and dll files. Here are some icons that it found in Google Talk executable:

A memory and CPU usage Monitor with a memory cleaner. The memory cleaner would essentially free up memory by dumping to the virtual memory, so make sure you don’t use it when you are working in an application. It would be helpful if you are going to launch a memory intensive application and don’t need the other applications for some time as they will become less responsive till they are swapped back into the memory.

It also lets you search and compare results from two search engines side by side. Check the search engines (no Bing sadly) you want, type in your query and hit enter. It will open up the search results in your web browser.

You can also change Commands in Demand’s settings. You can adjust transparency and control behavior like loading on startup and minimizing when a button is clicked to perform an action.

Commands in Demand is a nice application that lets you run several windows comments and perform a number of tasks from within a single application. It is a mix of a tweaker, launcher and a whole bunch of other tools. Definitely worth checking out. I would really like to see a portable version of an application like this. What do you think about it? Let us know in the comments.

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What you will need:

• The address of the FTP server you wish to communicate with. This can be an IP address or a domain name.
• The login credentials for a FTP account on the server (you don’t need this for anonymous or public FTP).
• An FTP client.

Assuming you know the address and the login credentials, let’s straight away hop over to the FTP client. As I mentioned before you can either use your browser as a client or use dedicated FTP software. If you want to download the occasional file or two from FTP sites you are good to do so with a browser, just type in the address of the file and make sure you use ftp:// instead of the usual http://.

If on the other hand you are managing a site or required to constantly upload/download files and manage accounts on the server you should use a FTP client designed for the task. Here are your choices:

• Most operating systems have a built in command line FTP client with which you would have to get familiar with the commands.
• You can also use one of the GUI FTP clients: Firefox users can try FireFTP, or you can use FileZilla, built specially with FTP in mind.

It is easier to find your way around the GUI tools. A typical GUI client would have two panes, one showing the remote FTP directory and the other showing directories on your computer. There are buttons representing transfer between the two panes. Browse to the directories you want to transfer to/from like you would do inside Windows Explorer, click on the appropriate transfer button and the client takes care of the rest.

All the commands are issued transparently by the client without requiring you to issue them explicitly. While this may seem easier, it is always handy to know what is going on behind the scenes, which you can by trying out the commands yourself.

Let’s touch up the basic FTP commands, shall we?

First and foremost you need to connect to the host. Use ftp to connect to the host. The server would respond with some information including if anonymous access is allowed.  If it isn’t, you will be required to enter a username and password for the FTP account on the server.

Go ahead and enter those details. If you don’t know your username or password, you would have contact the administrator of the site or create a new FTP user (if you are the administrator).

After a successful login you can perform any desired operations on the files. You can always use the help to get a list of available commands or get help on any command as well.

Let us now see how you can perform the basic file operations over FTP:

1. Moving around

• To get a directory listing both ls and dir work.
• You can change directories using the ubiquitous cd command. e.g. cd www changes to the www directory, To change to a local directory (i.e. a directory on your computer) instead use the lcd command.
• To know which directory you are currently working in use the pwd (present working directory) command.
• You can create directories using the mkdir <dir-name> command, remove directory using rmdir <dir-name> .
• To delete a file use the delete <filename> command, rename files using rename <old-name> <new-name> .

2. Set File Transfer type

• If you are going to transfer text files (includes txt, html, shell scripts, css files etc) you need to set the file transfer mode to ascii using ascii command.
• On the other hand if you are going to transfer binary files (like images, pdf, MS office files, compiled code or executables etc) you need to set the file transfer mode to binary using binary command.

3. Transferring files

• To upload files to the server use the put command. e.g. put style.css would upload style.css from your local directory to the remote directory. Not that put doesn’t allow you to use wildcards, use mput instead, if you want to use wildcards.
• Similarly to download a file you can use the get <filename> or the mget <filenames/wildcards> commands.

4. Creating your own FTP server

If you pay a hosting company for server space, they generally have things configured beforehand and some even create accounts for you. You can always use the management panel to create and edit FTP accounts and some settings. You would have to poke around the management panel your hosting company is providing you with.

If you want to create an FTP server on your home network some configuration is needed. Windows user can try the Filezilla server. Its great and simple to use. Linux users have plenty of options out of which vsftpd is pretty straighforward and feature rich.

Once you have configured the server you can access your files from any computer on your home network, using the IP address of the FTP server. If you want to be able to access your server from across the Internet you would require a static IP or perhaps you could look into something like dyndns (which we discussed briefly while configuring remote access to your torrents).

That’s it, you have enough knowledge to get you started and help you along whenever working with FTP. Let us know if you use some other tools for similar purposes.

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Drag and drop files for a full path

Tired of typing the long pathnames for files/folders buried deep inside a folder tree? Just drag and drop the file onto the command prompt window and you will get the full path and filename reveal to you.

Copy and paste from/to the command line

Click on the icon in the title bar and choose Edit > Mark. Now, drag over the area you want to copy, hit Enter and the text is copied to the clipboard. Similarly, you can click on the icon in the title bar and choose Paste to paste the text you already have on the clipboard. You can also do this by right-clicking inside the command prompt window

Hit F7 for command line history

Hit F7 and you will get a complete list of commands that you executed. Use the arrow keys to highlight the command you want to run again or just hit the number key corresponding to the command that you want to execute.

History keys

Use F1 to paste the previous command one character at a time, F2 (followed by a number) to paste the previous command up to the said number and F3 to paste the previous command.

Run multiple commands

You can run multiple command by separating them with &&. Note that this doesn’t run the commands simultaneously. Instead, the command towards the left is run first and if it completes successfully then the second command will run. If the first command fails, then the second command will not run

Go fullscreen

Hit Alt+Enter and now you have the entire screen to enter your commands and view the output. Sadly,. this doesn’t work as expected in Vista and you might have to do some additional tinkering.

Change window size

So you thought you knew the previous one? How would you change the size of the window? Use the mode command. Use mode <no of characters wide>, <no of lines high> to change the size of the window. For example, mode 100, 50 will make the window 100 characters wide and 50 lines high

Get help

Linux users turn to the man command when in doubt, while Windows users don’t have complete manuals to refer. All is not lost. You can get some help for most commands by using command /? or command –help. You can also use the help command to see a list of available commands (although the list is far from extensive).

Filter command output

If you are only interested in part of command output and don’t want to spend time scanning the entire output, you can pass the output over to the find command. eg use tasklist | find “firefox” to only list the entry for Firefox if it is running.

Sleep or pause for some time

If you have ever written a batch file and wanted to wait for a period of time before you start executing the next command, you might have been amazed to find the “sleep” command missing. You can however hack yourself a sleep command using ping! Use ping -n 5 127.0.0.1 > NUL 2>&1 to wait for 5 seconds. Be warned that the timing would not be exact so don’t just bet your life on it.

Think you know some more tricks? Have a command line tip to share? Sound off in the comments and let us know!

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“Ten” a soft female voice answered.

“What’s our chance of survival?”

“Zero percent.”

Kirk smiled and said “Computer, increase the shield to maximum.” He sat on his chair on the bridge “and play me some Mozart.”

“Affirmative.”

Then the scene from my imaginary episode of Star Trek continues with a fierce space battle between the USS Enterprise and ten Romulan battleships while Mozart’s “Air In G” plays in the background.

Countless episodes of sci-fi movies shows us that one of the major dreams of humans is to be able to have a conversation with computers. Your Mac OS X has a great speech recognition technology that is overlooked by most of its users. And even if we are still far from what the sci-fi movies dream about, talking with your Mac could be a very fun thing to do.

The Figure of Speech

To enable the speech recognition ability and use speech commands on your Mac, the first thing you have to do is open the Speech menu from System Preferences.

Then you need to choose the Speech Recognition tab.

Turn the function on by choosing On on the Speakable Items radio button.

The next step would be to choose the sound source – the default is Internal Microphone. Then you would want to calibrate it.

You could change the Listening Key if you don’t want to use the default Esc key.

There are two options on how the computer should listen to you. If you don’t want to have “accidental” operation, choose Listen only while key is pressed radio button. If you want to have the nearest working environment to the USS Enterprise, choose Listen continuously with keyword and pick your favorite keyword.

To make sure that your Mac acknowledges your command, put the checkmark into Speak command acknowledgement option.

The Voice behind The Machine

We now come to the personal preferences part – which voice do you want to speak to you?  Personally, I like a girl’s voice as I consider my Mac to be a female. But there are many choices that Mac users could choose from the Text to Speech tab.

There are other options related to Speech that you can choose from this tab. My favorite is Speak selected text when the key is pressed. This way I can have my writing read to me as I can easily spot mistakes this way. Just don’t forget to choose the key combination.

But even without having this option checked, you still could have the text read to you by selecting any text then right-click on it and choose Speech –> Start Speaking. Please note that this right click option is not available for all applications.

The quality of the speech is still very “machine” and far from a human sound. But sometimes it is fun listening to your document instead of reading it.

The List of Mac Speech Commands

So, how would you know what command to say to your Mac? Click on the down arrow from the Speech Recognition Window and choose Open Speech Command Window. You’ll have a window with a list of commands available.

From my experiment I found out that these commands are easily editable. Just open the Speakable Items Folder (/User/Library/Speech/Speakable Items/) then rename the file(s). If you think that the “Minimize Speech Commands window” command is too long, just rename the corresponding file into something shorter, and then your Mac will understand the new command.

Please note that this feature will not work correctly in noisy environments since the noises will interfere with your spoken command.

Another annoyance is that sometimes the machine can be so stupid that you have to repeat a command several times.

But all in all, these speech recognition features of Mac OS X is another cool feature that Mac users should try.

As a fun bonus, try to say this command to your Mac: “tell me a joke” and share your thoughts and experiences using Mac speech commands using the comments below.

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Want to show off your command line prowess to your geeky friends but don’t know any cool tricks?  Well you are in luck. The following websites will give you plenty of tricks and tips to satiate your hunger:

shell-fu

“Fu” is defined as possessing superior skills related to an art. Aptly named “Shell fu” houses user-submitted command line goodies, tips and tricks. You can vote entries up if you like them and vote them down if you find they are harmful or do not work as advertised.

If you have some tricks of your own you can even submit them and they will be added to the site after the moderators have a look at them.

command-line-fu

Shell fu and Command-line fu are almost identical in concept. Command-line fu allows users to share their CLI wisdom with others and also vote up and down on submitted snippets.

Both shell-fu and command-line fu allow you to follow snippets through RSS and Twitter although I did find command-line fu offers a bit of extra control on RSS feeds.

snipt

Snipt is the “long term memory for coders”.  Snipt is a collection of frequently used commands and code snippets. You can share these snippets with your co-workers or make them public. Public snippets are viewable to everyone and for our specific case, we are interested in the bash section. However feel free to browse other sections as well.

good coders code, great reuse

While all the other resources mentioned utilize the power of the crowds to build up content, this one is different. It is Peteris Krumins blog about programming, software and hacking.

What’s so special about it? The famous sed, awk one liners, vim tips, plugins and cheat sheets that Peteris has fabricated over time. The occasional musical geek friday is fun as well.

While it may not be updated as often as the others, but more often than not the content is worth the wait.

Pick up the basics

While the places mentioned above have plenty of content to keep you busy learning, they are not the best places to start your journey. If you want to start with basics have a look at Introduction to the Linux Command Line published on MakeUseOf earlier. You may also find command line basics here and here. For advanced topics you can read the Advanced Shell Scripting Guide.

That’s plenty of information to keep you involved and build up your Linux-fu! Do you know of any good sites to learn Linux commands? Or have you referred to a Linux command line tutorial that you really like? Share with the world in the comments!

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Nircmd allows you to open the CD tray, dial an internet connection, increase & decrease the system volume, center all windows, remove the title bar from the ‘My Computer’ window, set a window as always on top, hide the start button on the taskbar, change the display mode of your monitor, turn off the monitor, start and stop windows services, write and delete registry entries, clipboard management, take screenshots, connect to a VPN, show/hide the start button, show/hide the clock and much much more.

Quite a handful. Isn’t it? Wait till you hear that it does all this from the command line. Yep! FROM THE COMMAND LINE.

How to Use It:

(1) Download and extract the contents
(2) You will get nircmd.exe along with a help file listing various functions performed by nircmd.
(3) Copy nircmd.exe to C:\windows\system32 or any other folder that is specified in the PATH environment variable.
(4) Run a command!

Get Creative

These are some of the creative ways I could think of using Nircmd. Maybe you can let us know some more? Please mention them in the comments.

Create Shortcuts: nircmd allows you to create shortcuts (on your desktop of anywhere) to run any command. So you want to mute/unmute the system volume by clicking a
shortcut? Use this: nircmd.exe cmdshortcut “~$folder.desktop$” “Switch Volume” mutesysvolume 2

Disable Screensaver: nircmd.exe regsetval sz “HKCU\control panel\desktop” “ScreenSaveActive” 0

Take a screenshot after 30 seconds and save it: nircmd.exe cmdwait 30000 savescreenshot “f:\temp\shot.png”

Start the screensaver: nircmd.exe screensaver

Hide the clock on the system tray: nircmd.exe win child class “Shell_TrayWnd” hide class “TrayClockWClass”

Show the clock: nircmd.exe win child class “Shell_TrayWnd” show class “TrayClockWClass”

These are only some of the examples. You can find the complete list and more in the zip file you download.

You might ask why would you want to use a command line tool? Well if all that it does is not enough to push you then let me suggest some of the benefits of using the command line:

• If thou aspire to be a power user thou shall master “The Ancient Art of Command Line!”
• It’s faster, believe me, even if you have a decent typing speed you will be able to finish your work a lot faster doing it from the command line
• It’s easier to do a number of actions in bulk using the command line. Like copy the files to the specified directory and then rename them all with a common prefix.
• It’s easier to create a batch file and schedule tasks. Let’s say that you want to open the CD Tray at 2 am (it’s a weird one I know, you can laugh) how would you do it? Use Windows scheduled tasks and run the command at 2am. Although you might not gain a lot by doing so but this is just to let you know the power of the command line.
• You can integrate your custom commands into menus.
• You can create shortcuts and thus shortcut keys for your commands or batch files.

(By) – Varun Kashyap, a programmer, blogger and tech enthusiast, who also writes on his TechCrazy Blog (Its been a long time). Now you know he is a busy guy!

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To most Windows users the prospect of typing in what you want your computer to do is completely foreign and thus intimidating. It’s so intimidating in fact that Linux developers have poured countless hours into designing GUIs (graphical user interfaces) to imitate and/or replace text-based commands. But sometimes the command line is still the fastest, easiest, or only way to get something done.

What is this “Linux Command Line”?

A command line is a method of interacting with your computer that involves typing commands (that is, words and phrases that have meaning to the computer) to make it do things. Command line interfaces replaced punch card systems back in the 1950’s and subsequently made room for GUIs. Today all three major operating systems –Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux– have command line interfaces to go along with their GUIs, although Linux tends to rely on the command line more than the other two. (That being said, you can still do plenty with your system without ever touching the command line.)

Why Should I Use it?

Everyone will agree that the command line was a great invention and it served many early PC users well. But with our constant rush for the latest technology, many regard the command line as archaic and useless as a steam powered automobile. I disagree and I’m certainly not alone. Here are a few reasons it may come in handy:

1. It’s fast – “productivity” is a word that gets tossed around a lot by so-called power users, but the command line can really streamline your computer use, assuming you learn to use it right.

2. It’s easier to get help – The command line may not be the easiest thing to use, but it makes life a whole lot easier for people trying to help you and for yourself when looking for help, especially over the internet. Many times it’s as simple as the helper posting a few commands and some instructions and the recipient copying and pasting those commands. Anyone who has spent hours listening to someone from tech support say something like, “OK, now click this” knows how frustrating the GUI alternative can be.

3. It’s nearly universal – There are hundreds of Linux distros out there, each with a slightly different graphical environment. Thankfully, the various distros do have one common element: the command line. There are distro-specific commands, but the bulk of commands will work on any Linux system.

4. It’s powerful – The companies behind those other operating systems try their best to stop a user from accidentally screwing up their computer. Doing this involves hiding a lot of the components and tools that could harm a computer away from novices. Linux is more of an open book, which is due in part to its prominent use of the command line.

OK, so what do I need to know?

Truly mastering the command line, like anything, takes plenty of time and practice. Entire books and websites have been written on the subject, but we can at least cover the basics here.

Navigate the file system – Like Windows, Linux uses a system of folders and files to organize data. When you first open a terminal you will be, by default, in the home folder. Enter the pwd (print working directory) command to make sure and it should output something like /home/user_name. Enter ls to list all the files and folders in your home folder. If you’ve been using your OS for a while your home folder is likely full of files and folders.

Rummage through the debris and you should find the Desktop folder. Let’s take a look at that. Type cd (change directory) and the directory name to go to any place on your computer. In this case we want to go to the Desktop directory, but there are three ways of writing its “address”: The long way, /home/user_name/Desktop, and the two shorthand ways, ~/Desktop, ./Desktop. The tilde (~) is shorthand for “/home/user_name,” while the period is shorthand for the current directory. Sound confusing? If so then I suggest just using the longhand way for now.

A few simple tasks – Using the ls command in my Desktop directory returns that I have a couple of cute cat pictures there that I just downloaded. Well, I want to get them off my desktop and into their own folder. So first I’ll enter “mkdir ~/cats” to make a directory called “cats” in my home directory. Now to move the two pictures to the new cat directory I enter “mv ./Fluffy.jpg ./mr-jingles.jpg ~/cats”. It may seem confusing, but it simply tells the computer to move the two pictures (the .jpg files) from the desktop to the “cat” folder in the home folder. You can also use the cp command instead of mv to copy the pictures without changing the originals on the desktop. Should I ever feel the need, I can use the “rm /path/to/files/” command to remove them. Please note, however, that using this command does not put the file in the trash bin, but instead deletes it forever.

A little miscellaneous info – Most commands (if not all) have a variety of options you can use to change the way the command works. Enter “[command] -[option letter]” to use options. Enter “man [command]” to open a command’s manual page and learn a bit about what a specific command does as well as its particular options. Lastly is the concept of root user. Some commands (particularly ones that could harm your computer if used recklessly or with malice) require you to become root user beforehand, using either the su or sudo commands.

A warning – The command line is great, but as Uncle Ben from Spider-Man says, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” So please do not enter any commands that you know absolutely nothing about. Be wary of copying and pasting questionable commands off the internet. Be especially wary of the rm command since you may cause irrevocable damage to your system and data. I hope this doesn’t discourage you, but instead prompts you to use a bit of caution when dealing with the Linux command line.

Where do I go from here?

Those are the absolute basics, but there is still so much to learn. There are plenty of articles both on and off the internet that go much deeper into the subject and even reference guides that list every single command. I suggest you don’t look at them just yet. Instead, I suggest you spend a few weeks or even months getting used to the command line and picking up things as you go along. Gradually you will learn what is useful and what is not so useful, what works better on the command line than the GUI and what doesn’t. This in turn will help you get the most out of your Linux system and maybe even fall in love with computing all over again.

(By) Abraham Kurp was introduced to open source software a few years ago and it was love at first site. When not preaching the virtues of open source he enjoys reading classic science fiction, playing obscure video games, dabbling in programming, and of course writing.

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For our dear readers who are back in time from Year 2050’s multitouch interfaces and voice recognitions and don’t remember what a command line is, I would like to remind them that the command line is the allegedly boring but the all powerful geeky way to work, where you write commands and your system says, “yes master I will do it!” (of course it can say bad command or filename too!).

Nevertheless what we are going to show are web command lines which are powerful for sure, but not a bit boring! Have a look:

First up bringing such features to the web is Yubnub. But wait. Don’t count out the Web 2.0 effect just yet because Yubnub not only offers you a command line (or box), but it also offers you a “social command line”. We will see what it means in just a moment. First let’s have a look around Yubnub.

As soon as you reach Yubnub you are greeted with a search box thingy! This my friends is your “Command Line for the Web”. It lets you search, convert, download, play … and do lots of other things usin simple 1-3 letter commands. It’s like a Google Search box on steroids. You will see some popular (not common) commands listed below the box. Lets see what you can do with the Yubnub command line. Take a deep breath – this is going to be a long list.

• Search Google, Yahoo, eBay, Flickr
• Get stock quotes
• Get news from CNN, BBC, this and that
• Search music
• Get meanings of words
• Get a thesaurus
• Search Wikipedia
• Generate a random number
• Play games
• Generate Sudoku puzzles
• Perform a Who is query
• Get Java Classes documentation
• Do a reverse lookup of phone numbers
• Strip off images, css and javascript from a web page
• Find a username and password for a site
• Search movies
• Get Torrent files
• Create ASCII art
• Convert between units
• Convert currencies
• Open up a RSS feed in Google Reader
• Translate text from one language to another
• Get weather forecasts
• Digg articles
• Search your mail
• Create mashup of yubnub commands
• And
• And
• …..

I give up. There are thousands of commands. Let’s now move on to the social aspect of YubNub. YubNub allows you to create your own commands and let’s you use the commands created by others so there is practically no limit to the number of commands and what you can do with them. You can view the most commonly used commands.

Not only this but you can install addons or tweak your browser (almost all browsers are supported) so that you can use YubNub irrespective of the web page you are on. You can also find community created widgets for your operating system on this page so as to improve your YubNub experience and get the truly command line experience!

You can also view what people have been up to by looking at the most popular commands. Also some of the commands are called Golden Eggs which means the commands people find particularly useful and interesting.

In case you are still wondering why the hell its called YubNub, then first of all be aware these are the Web 2.0 days and you can never trust the names.

Lets start with some fun. Here is a list of my favorite YubNub commands:

pod – searches podcasts
flkall – displays flickr pics with tags
url – converts a yubnub command to a URL
explode – Explodes a string to an array in xml, xoxo, or json
php – php function look up
muo – you know what it does!
techCrazy – Searches my blog!
The g, gim, a commands are common so I m not mentioning those

Bonus:

Since we are already talking about using the so called “commands” on the web, I must mention Sugarcodes here. Sugarcodes also allows you to launch, navigate, search, locate, translate, find and look up items on the web with the help of commands. Like Yubnub, Sugarcodes also has a variety of commands to offer. You can browse commands by categories and even create your own commands.

Sugarcodes has one additional feature that the commands users create are first termed “usercodes”, after some time they are upgraded to “sugarcodes” after their correctness and conformance with the policy is verified.

Navino.com is another site that offers similar functions as Yubnub but the functionality is limited to search only. You can perform a search on a number of sites and engines using the keywords from just one search box, but that’s pretty much it.

Goosh - The unofficial Google shell allows you to use various Google services via the command line. The interface in this case is the closest to the command line. Functionality and usefulness? Um….not much, given that there are hundreds of other ways to do the same things without visiting the site.

Yubnub is certainly my favourite and offers a lot of functionality. Once you get to know the commands you want (or probably create the ones you want) then its very addictive. The ability to add Yubnub to your browser makes it a sure killer and a must have to save time.

So what do you think of YubNub? Which commands do you like? Let us know the commands you created so that we can check them out.

(By) Varun Kashyap – A tech enthusiast, programmer and a blogger who invites you to visit his TechCrazy Blog

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