I stumbled upon this set of eight UNIX tutorials for beginners on the University of Surrey Electrical Engineering department’s website and the tuts are so simple & so straightforward that they’re honestly some of the best tuts I’ve seen for command line learning. From basic & essential directory commands like remove and list to filename conventions and changing a file mode – to simply explaining how compiling source code works – these tuts really are really easy to understand for even the newest of noobs to dive into command line learning.
UNIX is an operating system which was first developed in the 1960s, and has been under constant development ever since. By operating system, we mean the suite of programs which make the computer work. It is a stable, multi-user, multi-tasking system for servers, desktops and laptops.
UNIX systems also have a graphical user interface (GUI) similar to Microsoft Windows which provides an easy to use environment. However, knowledge of UNIX is required for operations which aren’t covered by a graphical program, or for when there is no windows interface available, for example, in a telnet session.
We have many public domain and commercial software packages installed on our systems, which are available to all users. However, students are allowed to download and install small software packages in their own home directory, software usually only useful to them personally.
There are a number of steps needed to install the software.
Locate and download the source code (which is usually compressed)
Unpack the source code
Compile the code
Install the resulting executable
Set paths to the installation directory
Of the above steps, probably the most difficult is the compilation stage.