Introduction

Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards. He began his work in 1991 when he released version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel was released. The current full-featured version is 2.4 (released January 2001) and development continues.

Linux is developed under the GNU General Public License and its source code is freely available to everyone. This however, doesn't mean that Linux and its assorted distributions are free -- companies and developers may charge money for it as long as the source code remains available. Linux may be used for a wide variety of purposes including networking, software development, and as an end-user platform. Linux is often considered an excellent, low-cost alternative to other more expensive operating systems.

Due to the very nature of Linux's functionality and availability, it has become quite popular worldwide and a vast number of software programmers have taken Linux's source code and adapted it to meet their individual needs. At this time, there are dozens of ongoing projects for porting Linux to various hardware configurations and purposes.

Linux has an official mascot, the Linux Penguin, which was selected by Linus Torvalds to represent the image he associates with the operating system he created.

Although many variations of the word Linux exist, it is most often pronounced with a short " i " and with the first syllable stressed, as in LIH-nucks.

Taken from linux.org's What is Linux webpage: http://www.linux.org/info/index.html

Useful Commands

Note about notation

• All of the following commands should be typed into the Little Shell
• All commands should be typed after a blank prompt, which looks like:
  [grace@acl13 ~]$
• Any thing enclosed in brackets [] or <> should be replaced with something meaningful to what you are doing. For example:
  The instruction: mv [From File] [To File or directory]
  Should be typed as: mv a.cpp b.cpp
  Where a.cpp is the orignal file and b.cpp is the file you wish to move the file to.
  Also could be typed as: mv a.cpp source/
  Where a.cpp is the orignal file and source is the directory into which you want the file moved to.
• <...> Means that the previous option can be repeated any number of times.
• Options in [] are required, and options in <> are optional.

Changing your password

yppasswd

Deleting Files

rm [filename.cpp] <...>
Example: rm buggy.cpp

Copying one File to Another File (Replacing it)

cp [from_filename.cpp] [to_filename.cpp]
Example: cp not_buggy.cpp buggy.cpp

Moving Files to a directory

mv [from_filename.cpp] [directory_name]
Example: mv good.cpp assignment1/

Renaming a file

mv [from_filename.cpp] [to_filename.cpp]
Example: mv good.cpp bad.cpp
Note: The [from_filename.cpp] (or good.cpp in the example) will be removed.

Creating a Directory

mkdir [directory_name]
Example: mkdir cs127

Removing a Directory

rmdir [directory_name]
Example: rmdir cs127

Changing Directories (moving up into a directory)

cd [directory_name]
Example: cd cs127

Moving back down from a directory

cd ..
Example: cd ..

Coming Home (when lost in directories)

cd
Example: cd

List all files and directories

ls
Example: ls

Cool Linux Tricks

Auto-TAB complete

If you are typing a filename, press the TAB key to have linux try and complete the name of the file. If you press TAB twice in a row it will give you a listing of possible options that could complete this statement.

Auto-copy on Highlight

If you Left Click and drag over a section of text, Linux automatically puts this in a buffer. If you are fortunate enough to be working with a three button mouse then by pressing the middle button it will "Paste" that highlighted section of text to where you middle clicked.