"The command line can be very intimidating to new users. Having
to use the command line is one of the chief complaints and fears
for a lot of users who venture into Linux. But it doesn't have to
be scary, and you don't need to know everything to dip your toe in
and find out how useful the CLI can be.
"When we talk about the command line on Linux, we're usually
talking about GNU Bash. In this tutorial, I'll show some of the
basics of Bash without getting too deep into Bash's functionality.
This means that I'll skim over a lot that more expert users already
know, but try to provide a sane overview for new users who aren't
(yet) gung-ho about using the CLI.
"What's Bash?
"Bash is the shell for most major Linux distributions. If you're
running openSUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Slackware, Mandriva, then when
you are at a console or have a terminal open, you're working with
Bash. The name, "Bash" is actually modeled after the Bourne shell,
a shell that was created by Stephen Bourne and distributed with
Unix starting in the late 1970s. The "Bourne again shell" emulates
the original Bourne shell in many ways, but also adds a number of
features and runs on far more operating systems than the
original."