Linuxtutorial: Internet Browsers

Working with Linux - First Things First

When you work as root

You have now installed Linux and the first thing you did was login as 'root'. Then you provided a password so that you and ONLY you could login to the system as 'root'. When you decide to work as root, you had better go into a phone booth first and change into a blue suit with a big 'S' on the front because 'root' is known as the 'superuser' (you can skip the red tights if you want).

That's really not meant to be just a witty reference to the Man of Steel. Actually, it is much more glamorous to be 'Superman' but root is actually more like the 'janitor' of the Linux system. Root has the keys to everything. He can shut off the lights, shut off the heat, lock you out of the building; he has to clean up the system and in the end make sure everything runs. And the most important thing about being a janitor - he sees everything.

'root' is not for routine work

As I mentioned, Linux makes your computer a true multi-user system, which means that besides root, you can and should work as another person. I say 'should' because doing routine work as 'root' could be hazardous to your health. When I first started using Linux myself, information was not all that readily available and I still had that 'one computer- one user' concept in my brain. It was after I had trashed all of the files and programs that make Linux run that I realized that working regularly as root wasn't a good idea.

Frequently Used Shell Commands

cd' command

To show the student the basic uses of the 'cd' command The first command you'll use is 'cd'. We talked about this in a previous lesson, so let's review the basics.

'cd' means 'change directory'.

The 'ls' command

To show the student the various variations of the 'ls' command 'ls' is another command that we've discussed a bit before. Let's go into some more detail.

Typing 'ls' will list the contents of a directory with just information about file names.

You can use 'ls a*' to list the names of all the files that begin with the letter 'a' and so on down through the alphabet. Please do not use the cuneiform alphabet unless you're from ancient Mesopotamia.

more' and 'less'

To introduce the student to these commands 'more' is a command that you can use to read, for example, what's written in that 'stuff' file that Tony sent you.

You would type 'more stuff' to see the jokes.

Press the 'q' key to stop viewing the file

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Internet Browsers

Popular, useful and important programs that run in X-Window

At this point you've chosen your window manager and/or desktop environment. Regardless of the "look" you've chosen, you have to have programs to run. You need applications to surf the Internet, write email, manage your files, write letters and a thousand other things you want to do. The rumors you hear about Linux lacking applications or not being able to "make it on the desktop" are false. There is no major application that a computer user needs that Linux lacks.
Internet/WWW Browsers

Firefox

Firefox is the most popular open source browser. It is available not only for Linux, but for the other major OS platforms. It is based on Mozilla, which is an open source re-write of the famous Netscape Navigator.

Opera

Billed as the "fastest browser", Opera Software of Norway released their first version of Opera for Linux in March of 2000. These early versions were not stable but the company kept working and slowly added features to their Linux versions. Though the Linux version doesn't offer all of the features of their Windows version, it offers most of them. Though an ad-supported version is available free of charge, Opera is a proprietary product and its source code is not freely available.

Konqueror

Konqueror, part of the KDE project, is a file manager and Internet browser wrapped up into one. You can surf the net and manage your files at the same time. With each subsequent version, new, powerful features are added. Since it forms part of KDE, you need to the desktop environment installed to run Konqueror.

Now, let's look at some popular email clients available for Linux

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'mv' command for renaming files

Let's go back yet again to Tony's file, 'stuff' again. 'stuff' is not a good name for a file just as 'book' isn't a good name for a book. Just imagine: "The number one bestselling book this week is 'Book' by John Author.

You should probably re-name this file to something meaningful. I would suggest doing something like this:

mv stuff tonys_jokes

The 'mkdir' command

mkdir' is the command for making directories. 'mkdir' may be familiar to MS-DOS users out there. As you have noticed, the people who wrote these programs tried to give them names that described what they do more or less, not as long as 'makemeadirectoryplease' and not too cryptic like 'xr77b'.

Using the 'mkdir' command

To create the directory 'my_friends' that we talked about in the last lesson, you would type:

mkdir my_friends

There are no whistles or buzzers. If you'd like some sort of acknowledgment, you could type

mkdir --verbose my_friends

and it will tell you that you created the directory.

The 'rm' command

cdrom	home	opt	tmp
dev	lib	proc	usr
bin	etc	lost+found		root	var
boot	floppy	mnt	sbin

Linuxtutorial

Working with Linux - First Things First

When you work as root

'root' is not for routine work

The basic directory structure in Linux

The /bin directory

The /etc directory

Frequently Used Shell Commands

cd' command

The 'ls' command

more' and 'less'

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