Linux Gate #0 : Is Linux terminal that scary ?

 

If you are like me: someone loves to learn and discover... then you probably come across Linux terminal as a cool thing to learn and to master... You know, you have a black screen in front of you that you can communicate with through words and weird symbols : or as Linux's community called it A COMMAND.

It's true that Linux doesn't help you that much, I mean the first time you came across this black screen you probably wondered how this is supposed to works? What to write on it? How to write? What if i accidentally typed in somethings and it ruined my new laptop ? What am I supposed to do with that? Etc...

The problem though is you know that this thing is something useful and you have the intuition that it can help you in you work or at least provide you with some value or something not anyone have. (Unless you are surrounded by computer science engineers in your life !)

On the other hand, if you've known someone who works with Linux terminal a lot and use it very easily as if it's something everyone is supposed to master from birth, you probably feel discouraged by the fact that you are somehow left behind and it's too late or simply it's not for you.

Linux sounds cool in a resume and it certainly adds a versatile aspect of you skill set, I mean it shows that you can do things in the real world: That's why, on average, most recruiters consider additional computer skill such as Linux or a coding language as a very appreciable plus to have for a profile. You want to master Linux and show that you know how you'll use it to give value ! I feel you :)

Linux is widely used in software/web development as a place where you can run any piece of code. Imagine how many software one can start to create once the terminal is mastered aside with some other language code like Python !

One can even commercialize its program in order to fulfill an existing need for industrial use ! You probably heard of success stories of persons who build interesting programs that worth millions ... and you think that Linux is for sure the gate you have to cross.

If you ever felt this way about Linux , you probably not alone !

We figured to make this article in order to introduce you gently to the essence of Linux and terminal and let's start right ahead:

Q. What is Linux ?

R. Linux is an operating system like windows.

Q. What is the black screen Linux have ?

R. The black screen is called the terminal.

Q. What's that for?

R. It's Linux mind where you are supposed to talk (by writing) to it. You can ask it to do things!

Q. What things?

R. For example you can ask Linux this : "Find me that document where i wrote my journal that has the word day in it". You can command it to do that i.e. write a command to it!

Q. Would the terminal understand that as it is? Does it understand English?

R. No, you can't write English phrases to it! It has its own language that is called "BASH" .You talk English and it talks "BASH" !

Q. Does BASH like English?

R. Yes, BASH is a language with very smooth logic you can understand. We can say that BASH has a very elegant grammar rule.

Q. How to tell to it to find me my journal document?

R. Wrote simply this : find. -type file -name "journal" | xargs grep "day"

Q. Why do i feel that there is a lot in this one line?

R. Your feeling is right! find is a command, xargs is a command, grep is a command and the weird symbol "|" is not a mistake it's a command too !

 Alright, We think that you begin to get a feeling of the next article of this discovery series of articles about Linux. At the end of this series, you will feel so relieved and so excited to learn more about Linux and commands.

I hope this was a helpful introduction to the black scary screen. See you next with the article : Linux GATE 1.

Sheers !