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If you’re new to the empowering world of Unix and would like to dive in, you should start with checking out why learning Unix is valuable and run through the 5 short tutorials that comprise the Unix crash course. Other than that, feel free to check out the other pages under the Unix pull-down menu above and listed below 🙂

Some terminology

Here are some terms that are often used interchangeably – not because it’s important to remember them or any differences (it’s not for most of us), but just to have them laid out somewhere.

Term What it is
shell what we use to talk to the computer; anything where we are pointing and clicking with a mouse is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) shell; something with text only is a Command Line Interface (CLI) shell
command line/terminal a text-based environment capable of taking input and providing output
Unix a family of operating systems (we also use the term “Unix-like” because one of the most popular operating systems derived from Unix is specifically named as not being Unix)
bash the most common programming language used at a Unix command-line


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