Switching to a Linux / Unix environmnt, for some, can be a daunting task. I presently use linux and have tinkered with it for some years. There are all kinds of gui based programs that closely resemble a Windows environment. There are others though that confuse the user to no end. The gui environment can be viewed from many different website and from Google images. What I would like to share are some of the shell commands that make linux a easier place to play. First off the shell is what most Windows users recognize as a prompt or DOS prompt. this is the most powerful part of the Linux machine. Without access to the shell, Linux may be useless.

There are a vast amount of shell commands in the Linux environment here are just a few of the basic ones:

ls = list the directory.

There are options that one can add onto the ls, and other commands,  to give them more power in their inquisitions. An example would be

ls

ls

ls -a

ls -l

ls -lR

The -a tells the machine to show the list with both the normal files one would see, as well as the hidden files in that directory. The -l added to the ls command extends the information about the files on the list. Things like when last modified, size and other useful information is added there. Adding the R to the -l shows all of the subfolders also in the directory one is hunting through.

chmod = change mode.

This option basically is just changing of permissions of the file by the owner. An example would be, if Joe made a file that Jane couldn’t access then Joe could chmod xxx filename to change the permissions so that others could access, use or change them around.

chown = owner of the file.

This command is used for changing the owndership for the file in question. Once again if Joe make a file and is the owner of it, he can transfer ownership of that file to someone other than himself. This is mainly used in cases of root (administrator) owning a file that other users cannot access or modify.

The above shell commands are just a few examples of the many hundred commands available for Linux users.