LINUX Linux is a multiuser, multitasking, operating system first developed by Linus Benedict Torvalds in the year 1991.

LINUX is a 32-bit operating system. It runs on a wide variety of platforms such as intel, Sparc, Alpha etc. it can be considered in every sense as a full-blown implementation of UNIX. But it cannot be called as UNIX because UNIX is a registered trademark product owned by AT&T. LINUX is distributed as free software under a free software license called GNU General public License (GPL). Advantage of LINUX: A lot of the advantages of Linux are a consequence of Linux' origins, deeply rooted in UNIX, except for the first advantage, of course: Linux is free. Linux is portable to any hardware platform Linux was made to keep on running: As with UNIX, a Linux system expects to run without rebooting all the time. That is why a lot of tasks are being executed at night or scheduled automatically for other calm moments, resulting in higher availability during busier periods and a more balanced use of the hardware. This property allows for Linux to be applicable also in environments where people don't have the time or the possibility to control their systems night and day. Linux is secure and versatile: The security model used in Linux is based on the UNIX idea of security, which is known to be robust and of proven quality. But Linux is not only fit for use as a fort against enemy attacks from the Internet: it will adapt equally to other situations, utilizing the same high standards for security. Your development machine or control station will be as secure as your firewall. Linux is scalable: From a Palmtop with 2 MB of memory to a petabyte storage cluster with hundreds of nodes: add or remove the appropriate packages and Linux fits all. You don't need a supercomputer anymore, because you can use Linux to do big things using the building blocks provided with the system. If you want to do little things, such as making an operating system for an embedded processor or just recycling your old 486, Linux will do that as well. The Linux OS and Linux applications have very short debugtimes: Because Linux has been developed and tested by thousands of people, both errors and people to fix them are found very quickly. It often happens that there are only a couple of hours between discovery and fixing of a bug. Disadvantage of LINUX: Linux is not very user friendly and confusing for beginners: Is an Open Source product trustworthy?

USING BASH FEATURE: Key or Combination of Key Ctrl+A Ctrl+C Ctrl+D Ctrl+E Ctrl+H Function Move cursor to the beginning of the command line. End a running program and return the prompt, Log out of the current shell session, equal to typing exit or logout. Move cursor to the end of the command line. Generate backspace character.

Ctrl+L Ctrl+R Ctrl+Z ArrowLeft and ArrowRight ArrowUp and ArrowDown Shift+PageUp and Shift+PageDown Tab

Clear this terminal. Search command history Suspend a program Move the cursor one place to the left or right on the command line, so that you can insert characters at other places than just at the beginning and the end. Browse history. Go to the line that you want to repeat, eventually edit details, and press Enter to save time. Browse terminal buffer (to see text that has "scrolled off" the screen). Command or filename completion; when multiple choices are possible, the system will either signal with an audio or visual bell, or, if too many choices are possible, ask you if you want to see them all Shows file or command completion possibilities.

Tab Tab

The whatis commands A short index of explanations for commands is available using the whatis command, like in the examples below:
[your_prompt] whatis ls ls (1) list directory contents

This displays short information about a command, and the first section in the collection of man pages that contains an appropriate page The help option Most GNU commands support the help, which gives a short explanation about how to use the command and a list of available options. Below is the output of this option with the cat:
userprompt@host: cat help Usage: cat [OPTION] [FILE]... Concatenate FILE(s), or standard input, to standard output. A, showall equivalent to vET b, numbernonblank number nonblank output lines e equivalent to vE E, showends display $ at end of each line n, number number all output lines s, squeezeblank never more than one single blank line t equivalent to vT T, showtabs display TAB characters as ^I u (ignored) v, shownonprinting use ^ and M notation, except for LFD and TAB help display this help and exit version output version information and exit

The df command On a running system, information about the partitions can be displayed using the df command (which stands for disk full or disk free). In Linux, df is the GNU version, and supports the h or human readable option which greatly improves readability. The df command only displays information about active nonswap partitions.
freddy:~>df h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda8 496M 183M 288M 39% / /dev/hda1 124M 8.4M 109M 8% /boot /dev/hda5 19G 15G 2.7G 85% /opt /dev/hda6 7.0G 5.4G 1.2G 81% /usr /dev/hda7 3.7G 2.7G 867M 77% /var fs1:/home 8.9G 3.7G 4.7G 44% /.automount/fs1/root/home

FILE system of LINUX:

LINUX treat everything as file. Even the directory is treated as a file that contains entries for several others files. All hardware devices, such as I/O devices, storage device etc. are all treated as files. The linux file system organized in an hierarchy which starts with the root directory. The root is represented by a forward slash (/). Under root directory several are several system directories and the home directory. (LINUX uses forward slash (/) as a separator where windows or DOS uses back slash (\) as seperators.) Depending on the system admin, the operating system and the mission of the UNIX machine, the structure may vary, and directories may be left out or added at will.

/bin /boot

/dev /etc /home /initrd /lib /lost+found /misc /mnt /net /opt /proc

/root /sbin /tmp /usr /var

Common programs, shared by the system, the system administrator and the users. The startup files and the kernel, vmlinuz. In some recent distributions also grub data. Grub is the GRand Unified Boot loader and is an attempt to get rid of the many different bootloaders we know today. Contains references to all the CPU peripheral hardware, which are represented as files with special properties. Most important system configuration files are in /etc, this directory contains data similar to those in the Control Panel in Windows Home directories of the common users. (on some distributions) Information for booting. Do not remove! Library files, includes files for all kinds of programs needed by the system and the users. Every partition has a lost+found in its upper directory. Files that were saved during failures are here. For miscellaneous purposes. Standard mount point for external file systems, e.g. a CDROM or a digital camera. Standard mount point for entire remote file systems Typically contains extra and third party software. A virtual file system containing information about system resources. More information about the meaning of the files in proc is obtained by entering the command man proc in a terminal window. The file proc.txt discusses the virtual file system in detail. If you don't have a Linux machine at hand on which to locate this file, The administrative user's home directory. Mind the difference between /, the root directory and /root, the home directory of the root user. Programs for use by the system and the system administrator. Temporary space for use by the system, cleaned upon reboot, so don't use this for saving any work! Programs, libraries, documentation etc. for all userrelated programs. Storage for all variable files and temporary files created by users, such as log files,

the mail queue, the print spooler area, space for temporary storage of files downloaded from the Internet, or to keep an image of a CD before burning it. How can you find out which partition a directory is on? Using the df command with a dot (.) as an option shows the partition the current directory belongs to, and informs about the amount of space used on this partition:
sandra:/lib>df h . Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda7 980M 163M 767M 18% /