The Terminal in UNIX - A work session
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On almost all of today's PCs, UNIX-based operating systems come with a graphical interface. On Linux, this is either GNOME or KDE (K Desktop Environment). On some of them, however (mainly the served-based ones), a graphical interface is not installed, and you will have to use only the console.
Regardless of this, the basic steps you need to complete are the same. What differs is the environment. First, you need to authenticate yourself. Enter your user name and password. The environment variable settings (like what key should do what, how the screen should look, and so forth) are automatically set by the shell once we start a terminal.
During the session, we hold a conversation with the kernel. We can enter command lines one after another, and the shell will echo back via the terminal.
Not all commands print something on the console. Some may just do a job and close with that. In fact, within UNIX it is a general philosophy that only in case of error should something be printed. If something goes right, nothing should be printed on the terminal.
We can exit from the terminal with the exit command, or also by ending the input file the shell is interpreting. By default, this is the standard input. So when we send an eof signal (^D), the terminal will also close.
Of course, it is recommended to clean up after ourselves. If we modified the current working directory, we should set it back to the old one. We will learn how to do these tasks later. You can get the current working directory with the pwd (print working directory) command.
Next: Basic concepts for working with the shell >>
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