Learning the UNIX or Linux command line, quickly

06 May

Posted by Scott as UNIX, advice, learning

UNIX and Linux. Believe it or not, they’re everywhere. And no where more so than in the software development world. If you haven’t already encountered either of them at work, chances are you will. And you’ll probably need to document something (or several somethings) at the command line.

I can’t think of a technical communicator who isn’t comfortable working within a GUI. But not everyone is comfortable, or even has any experience, at the command line. The command line isn’t as daunting as some people think it is. In fact, you can get up to speed quite quickly. It’s just a matter of how.

Hit the books

And there are a lot of them. For UNIX, my favourite is the UNIX Visual QuickStart from PeachPit Press. This book probably goes a little deeper than you might want (at least, at first) but it’s a useful reference to have.

If you want a book that’s good and free, then check out the Introduction to the GNU/Linux Command Line by the folks from FLOSS Manuals. It’s a solid beginner’s guide that covers all of the basic Linux commands that you’ll need.

Of course, the Web is a great source of information on using the command line. Just do a search with your favourite search engine, and you’ll come up with a lot of tutorials, tips, and guides.

Putting theory into practice

Just reading about the command line obviously won’t be enough. You’ve got to get your hands dirty. Not all of use have, or work at a place where there’s, a spare computer running Linux or UNIX lying around. Luckily, there are ways around this. And you can use your current computer, whether at home or (if your employer allows it) at work. You won’t even have to dual boot.

First up, Cygwin. It’s an environment and a set of application that emulates the Linux/UNIX command line within Windows. You can read more about it here.

If that doesn’t do the trick, then give a live CD a shot. A live CD is an actual Linux distribution (there’s also one for Open Solaris, a free version of Solaris) that runs from a CD. You just pop the CD in your computer’s CD drive, reboot, and in a short time you get a full Linux desktop (along with access to the command line). Nothing is installed on your computer; everything runs in memory. The main drawback is that most live CDs run slowly. You can learn more about using a live CD by reading this article.

Virtualization, though, is one of the best ways to go. I like to call virtualization software sleight of hand. It’s a form of trickery that enables a computer to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. And without the other operating system(s) touching your main (or host) operating system. You’ve probably heard of software called VMware, which is the industry leader in this space. I prefer to use an Open Source application called VirtualBox. This article takes a look at VirtualBox

If you’re using a Mac, you don’t have to do any of that. Mac OS X is built on BSD (a variant of UNIX). As such, it has a UNIX command line interface built in. Just run Terminal.app and away you go.

What next?

If you really want to hone your command line chops, then you can go a lot deeper. First, try learning more advanced UNIX commands — a good source of information is Unix Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide. You might also want to look into learning some scripting, whether it’s shell scripting, Perl, Python, or Ruby.

Knowledge of the command line is a great addition to the toolkit of any technical communicator. You never know when you’ll need it, but having that knowledge will definitely be worth the time you spend acquiring it.