- Learn basic Bash. Actually, type `man bash` and at least skim the whole thing; it's pretty easy to follow and not that long. Alternate shells can be nice, but Bash is powerful and always available (learning *only* zsh, fish, etc., while tempting on your own laptop, restricts you in many situations, such as using existing servers).
- Learn at least one text-based editor well. Ideally Vim (`vi`), as there's really no competition for random editing in a terminal (even if you use Emacs, a big IDE, or a modern hipster editor most of the time).
- Learn at least one text-based editor well. Ideally Vim (`vi`), as there's really no competition for random editing in a terminal (even if you use Emacs, a big IDE, or a modern hipster editor most of the time). However, you should start editing with `nano` in order to get the idea of how you can open, close a file or even do a simple search while editing.
- Know how to read documentation with `man` (for the inquisitive, `man man` lists the section numbers, e.g. 1 is "regular" commands, 5 is files/conventions, and 8 are for administration). Find man pages with `apropos`. Know that some commands are not executables, but Bash builtins, and that you can get help on them with `help` and `help -d`. You can find out whether a command is an executable, shell builtin or an alias by using `type command`.
Iliana Panagopoulou
8 years ago
committed by