Exercise 1: The Setup

In this appendix you will be instructed to do three things:

Do some things in your shell (command line, Terminal, PowerShell).

Learn about what you just did.

Do more on your own.

For this first exercise you'll be expected to get your Terminal open and working so that you can do the rest of the appendix.

Do This Get your Terminal, shell, or PowerShell working so you can access it quickly and know that it works. Mac OSX For Mac OSX you'll need to do this: Hold down the command key and hit the spacebar.

key and hit the spacebar. In the top right the blue "search bar" will pop up.

Type: terminal

Click on the Terminal application that looks kind of like a black box.

This will open Terminal.

You can now go to your dock and CTRL-click to pull up the menu, then select Options->Keep In dock. Now you have your Terminal open and it's in your dock so you can get to it. Linux I'm assuming that if you have Linux then you already know how to get at your Terminal. Look through the menu for your window manager for anything named "Shell" or "Terminal." Windows On Windows we're going to use PowerShell. People used to work with a program called cmd.exe , but it's not nearly as usable as PowerShell. If you have Windows 7 or later, do this: Click Start.

In "Search programs and files" type: powershell

Hit Enter. If you don't have Windows 7, you should seriously consider upgrading. If you still insist on not upgrading then you can try installing it from Microsoft's download center. Search online to find "powershell downloads" for your version of Windows. You are on your own, though, since I don't have Windows XP, but hopefully the PowerShell experience is the same.

You Learned This You learned how to get your Terminal open so you can do the rest of this appendix. Note If you have that really smart friend who already knows Linux, ignore him when he tells you to use something other than Bash. I'm teaching you bash. That's it. He will claim that zsh will give you 30 more IQ points and win you millions in the stock market. Ignore him. Your goal is to get capable enough and at this level it doesn't matter which shell you use. The next warning is stay off IRC or other places where "hackers" hang out. They think it's funny to hand you commands that can destroy your computer. The command rm -rf / is a classic that you must never type. Just avoid them. If you need help, make sure you get it from someone you trust and not from random idiots on the internet.