Contents

• Departmental Computing Facilities
• Real Basics
  • Who to ask for help?
  
  
• Beginner's Guide
  • Getting started
    • Logging in
    • Changing your password
    • Logging out of the system
  • Some basics
    • Correcting your typing
    • Special keys
    • Case sensitivity
    • On-line help
  • Files and directories
    • File names
    • Creating files and directories
    • Your current directory
    • Your home directory
    • Changing directories
    • Special directories
    • Special files
    • Other interesting directories
    • Viewing the contents of a text file
    • Listing files and directories
    • Wild-cards and file name completion
    • File protection
    • Copying files or directories
    • Renaming a file or directory:
    • Removing(Deleting) files or directories
    • Symbolic links and hard links
  • Editing files
    • The Vim file editor
    • The GNU emacs file editor
  • Printing files
  • Electronic mail
    • Forwarding email
    • Text-based mail clients
    • Graphical mail clients
  • Working on the Internet
    • Host-names and Internet addresses
    • Surfing the Internet
    • File transfer
    • Remote access
  • Linux graphical user interfaces
    • Cut and paste using a mouse
    • Working with the KDE desktop
    • Creating directories in the KDE file browser
    • Creating shortcuts on the KDE desktop
    • Using CDs and DVDs
    • Copying a directory to a CD or DVD
    • Burning CDs or DVDs
    • Playing a movie
    • Viewing a collection of photos
    • Editing photos
    • Running remote graphical programs
  • Other useful GUI programs
    • Viewing postscript and PDF files
  
  
• Advanced User's Guide
  • Customizing your shell and improving productivity
    • Startup or run control files
    • Changing your shell prompt
    • Setting the path: how the shell finds programs
    • Aliases
    • Customizing ls
    • Enhancing cd using a stack
    • Repeating and editing previous commands
  • Packing up and backing up your files
    • Archiving files with tar
    • Compressing files with gzip
    • Compressing files with bzip2
    • Backing up your files
  • Recovering lost files
  • Other useful commands
    • Finding the date and the time
    • Recording a terminal session
    • Obtaining information about other users
    • Changing your personal information
    • Changing your login shell
    • Disk quota
    • Checking disk usage
    • Counting the number of characters, words and lines
    • Finding patterns in files using your buddy grep
    • Locating files in the system
    • Finding files in your home directory
    • Using find for useful tasks
    • Sorting files
    • Displaying the last few lines in a file
    • Finding the differences between two text files
    • Finding the differences between two binary files
    • Time a command or a program
    • Spell checking
    • Watching a command
  • Filters: cool objects
    • Character transliteration with tr
    • Comparing sorted file with comm
    • Stream editing with sed
    • String processing with awk
  • Processes and Pipes
    • Input-Output redirection
    • Processes
    • Playing Lego in Linux
  • Shell programming
    • Creating new commands
    • Command arguments and parameters
    • Program output as an argument
    • Shell metacharacters
    • Shell variables
    • Loops and conditional statements in shell programs
    • Arithmetic in shell scripts
    • Interactive programs in shell scripts
    • Useful commands for shell scripts
    • Functions
    • More shell script examples
  
  
• Further Exploration
• Bibliography