[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“For a newcomer to Linux, or someone who is mainly
familiar with Windows, could you explain what the shell is and what
it does?“Michael Stutz: The shell is a program that
provides an interface between the user and the operating system–it
handles your input, controls the execution of other programs and
coordinates their output. Those are the generic requirements. In
practice, shells can be very robust environments. Most Linux
distributions come with several different shells preinstalled that
you can pick from. And you can run all kinds of
interfaces–graphical and otherwise–on top of a shell, but the
shell is always there at the base, mediating between you and the
operating system. The shell is one of the fundamental components of
the Unix operating system, of which Linux is a popular modern-day
variety…”