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The Linux Shell

In this course we will make heavy use of the terminal (a.k.a shell). With its help, we can interact with the computer via the command line. Whenever we give you some piece of code in grey shaded boxes like… 

$ whoami

…you can execute the corresponding commands in the shell. Note, the '$' sign represents the prompt in your shell1). Please do not copy it, when trying to copy-past commands from the DokuWiki to the shell. Depending on your settings, this prompt can look different, but typically it includes your user name, the name of the computer you are working with, and the directory you are currently located in.

Opening a shell

Depending on your operating system, there are different ways to open a shell (or a terminal)

Linux

If you are working on a linux box and you have X window support2), right click on the screen and a pop-up window will appear.

Figure 1: The desktop of a typical Ubuntu Linux distribution

If you select the item Terminal a shell will open in your browser.

Figure 2: A Linux terminal

Mac OS

If you are using Mac OS, just open Applications - Utilities - Terminal Alternatively, you can install XQuartz, which provides support for the X windows system as well.

Figure 3: Opening the terminal application in Mac OS

Once you have started the terminal something like the following will appear

Figure 4: The terminal in Mac OS

Windows

Most Windows operating systems don't ship with a terminal application. We suggest to install MobaXterm.

1)
This is the bit of text that is written next to your cursor
2)
Not when you are connecting to a remote computer via ssh, then you don't have to worry about opening a shell because you already in it