Linux Basics

WeeSan Lee <[email protected]>

http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~weesan/cs183/
Roadmap

 What is Unix?
 What is Linux?
 Which Linux Distribution is better?
 Getting help in Terminal
 Basic Commands
 Vi and Emacs
 Q&A
 References
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~weesan/cs183/
What is Unix?

 A multi-task and multi-user Operating System

 Developed in 1969 at AT&T’s Bell Labs by
 Ken Thompson (Unix)
 Dennis Ritchie (C)
 Douglas Mcllroy (Pipes - Do one thing, do it well)
 Some other variants: System V, Solaris, SCO
Unix, SunOS, 4.4BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD,
OpenBSD, BSDI

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What is Linux?
 A clone of Unix
 Developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish
graduate student
 Inspired by and replacement of Minix(by Andrew S.
Tanenbaum)
 Linus' Minix became Linux
 Consist of
 Linux Kernel
 GNU (GNU is Not Unix) Software
 Software Package management
 Others

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What is Linux?

 Originally developed for

32-bit x86-based PC
 Ported to other
architectures, eg.
 Alpha, VAX, PowerPC,
IBM S/390, MIPS, IA-64
 Andriod, PS2, TiVo,
cellphones, watches,
Nokia N810, NDS,
routers, NAS, GPS, …

* See references at the end

http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~weesan/cs183/ for the corresponding websites.
Which Linux Distribution is better?

 > 300 Linux Distributions

 Slackware (one of the oldest, simple and stable distro.)
 Redhat
 RHEL (commercially support)
 Fedora (free)
 CentOS (free RHEL, based in England)
 SuSe ( based in German)
 Gentoo (Source code based)
 Debian (one of the few called GNU/Linux)
 Ubuntu (based in South Africa)
 Knoppix (first LiveCD distro.)
 …

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Which Linux Distribution is better?
Ubuntu
Debian
Knoppix

Slackware Gentoo

CentOS

Redhat

Source:
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~weesan/cs183/
http://futurist.se/gldt/
Which Linux Distribution is better?

 Ask yourself these questions (from LAH)

 Is it going to be around in 5 yrs?
 Is it going to stay on top of the latest security
patches?
 Is it going to release updated software promptly?
 If I have problems, will the vendor talk to me?
 Personally, I use Ubuntu, Opensuse
 But, we will use CentOS (possibly along with
Slackware :)
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Linux Terminal Emulator
 Terminal is an interface to OS through
commands
 Other interface is Graphical User Interface
(GUI)
 Terminal emulator is a program that allows
the use of the terminal in a GUI environment
 Shell is a command-line interface that
interprets a user's commands and script files,
and tells the operating system what to do
 Shell Examples: bash, csh, ksh, zsh etc
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Getting help in Terminal
 Manpage  4 Device drivers and
network protocols
 $ man ls  $ man 4 tty
 $ man 2 mkdir  /dev/tty
 $ man –a mkdir  5 Standard file formats
 $ man man  $ man 5 hosts
 /etc/hosts
 $ man –k mkdir
 Manpage sections  6 Games and demos
 $ man 6 sol
 1 User-level cmds and apps  /usr/games/sol
 $ man 1 mkdir
 /bin/mkdir
 7 Misc. files and docs
 $ man 7 locale
 2 System calls
 $ man 2 mkdir  8 System admin. Cmds
 int mkdir(const char *, …);  $ man 8 reboot
 /sbin/reboot
 3 Library calls
 $ man 3 printf  $ manpath
 int printf(const char *, …);

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Getting help in Terminal (cont)

 Info
 Text-based, menu-based help from GNU
 ?, h, n, p, t, u Enter
 $ info info

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Basic Commands
 ls  which
 $ ls -l  $ which ls
 $ ls -a  whereis
 $ ls -la  $ whereis ls
 $ ls -l --sort=time  locate
 $ ls -l --sort=size -r  $ locate stdio.h
 cd  $ locate iostream
 $ cd /usr/bin  Apt (install packages/software)
 pwd  $ apt install emacs
 $ pwd  $ apt remove emacs
 ~  $ apt search emacs
 $ cd ~  $ rpm -qa | sort | less
 ~user  find
 $ cd ~weesan  $ find / | grep stdio.h
 What will “cd ~/weesan” do?  $ find /usr/include | grep stdio.h

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Basic Commands (cont)
 echo  rm
 $ echo “Hello World”  $ rm foo
 $ echo -n “Hello World”  $ rm -rf foo
 cat  $ rm -i foo
 $ cat /etc/hostname  $ rm -- -foo
 $ cat /proc/cpuinfo  chgrp
 $ cat /proc/meminfo  $ chgrp bar /home/foo
 cp  chsh
 $ cp foo bar  $ chsh foo
 $ cp -a foo bar  chfn
 mv  $ chfn foo
 $ mv foo bar  chown
 $ chown -R foo:bar /home/foo
 mkdir
 $ mkdir foo
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Basic Commands (cont)
 tar  Pipe
 $ tar cvfp lab1.tar lab1  $ cal > foo
 gzip  $ cat /dev/zero > foo
 $ gzip -9 lab1.tar  $ cat < /etc/passwd
 untar & ungzip  $ who | cut -d’ ‘ -f1 | sort |
 $ gzip -cd lab1.tar.gz | tar xvf – uniq | wc –l
 $ tar xvfz lab1.tar.gz  backtick
 touch  $ echo “The date is `date`”
 $ touch foo  $ echo `seq 1 10`
 $ cat /dev/null > foo  Hard, soft (symbolic) link
 ln vmlinuz-2.6.24.4 vmlinuz
 ln -s firefox-2.0.0.3 firefox

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Basic Commands (cont)

 Disk usage
 $ df -h /
 File space usage
 $ du -sxh ~/
 Advance stuff 
 $ ssh eon who
 $ ssh eon ‘cd .html ; tar cvfp - cs183 | gzip -9c’ | tar
xvfpz -
 $ ssh kilo-1 ‘tar cvfp - /extra/weesan’ | tar xvfp - -C /

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Vim
 2 modes  Delete
 dd (delete a line)
 Input mode
 d10d (delete 10 lines)
 ESC to back to cmd mode  d$ (delete till end of line)
 Command mode  dG (delete till end of file)
 Cursor movement  x (current char.)
 h (left), j (down), k (up), l (right)  Paste
 ^ (first char.)  p (paste after)
 $ (last char.)  P (paste before)
 G (bottom page)  Undo
 :1 (goto first line)  u
 Swtch to input mode  Search
 a (append)  /
 i (insert)  Save/Quit
 o (insert line after  :w (write)
 O (insert line before)  :q (quit)
 :wq (write and quit)
 :q! (give up changes)

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Other

 Windows  Linux
 Notepad, Wordpad  Gedit, nano, vim
 MS OFFICE  Libreoffice
 IE, Mozilla Firefox  Mozilla Firefox
 VLC  VLC
 Explorer(GUI)  Gnome, KDE
 Command Prompt  Gnome-terminal,
Konsole

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Q&A

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References

 LAH
 Ch 1: Where to Start
 Unix history
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix
 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_
history-simple.svg
 Linus Torvalds
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
 Linux Kernel
 http://www.kernel.org/

http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~weesan/cs183/
References

 GNU (Gnu’s Not Unix)

 http://www.gnu.org/
 Linux Distribution
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions
 PS2: Computational Cluster
 http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/cluster.php
 Linux Gadgets
 http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT4936596231.html
 TiVo
 http://dynamic.tivo.com/linux/linux.asp

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References
 Nintendo DS Lite
 http://www.nintendo.com/ds/

 Nokia N810
 http://www.nokia.com/

 http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/17/nokia-n810-gets-official/

 Linux Distribution
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution

 GNU/Linux Distro Timeline: http://futurist.se/gldt/

 http://www.distrowatch.com/

 http://www.linux.org/dist/

 Google Advance Search

 http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/refinesearch.html

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