Comments on: Linux: The Most Fun You Can Have with your Pants On

By: Coturnix

Coturnix — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 15:27:37 +0000

OK, I succumbed and got two XO laptops for my wife and daughter and may get another two for my son and myself. This will be the first time ever I will hold a machine with Linux on it and have no idea where to start. Is there a good place to start? A cool online tutorial? Or should I just bug you several times a day?

By: peter

peter — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:17:05 +0000

actually, at the command line, unless you specify otherwise, you get most of the features of a program called readline, and the emacs control key commands. though you can change it to use vi commands if you prefer… (a good way to start a religious war there…)type “man readline” at the prompt to find the rest of the key commands, (they’re a few pages in…)M- means the alt key. C-means the control keyC-d :delete forward characterM-d :delete forward wordC-k :delete to end of lineC-y :(yank) paste what C-k just deletedC-o :insert blank lineC-a :move cursor to beginning of lineC-e :move to the end of the lineC-p :same as up arrowM-< :go to first command in your command historyC-t :swap the letters before and after the cursorM-t :same, but with the whole wordsC-b :move one letter to the leftM-b :move one word to the leftC-f :move one letter to the rightM-f :move one word to the rightthere are lots more, these are some that I use every day... (one point to bear in mind, these control key sequences were developed when the control key was where the caps lock key is now. as a result of the moving to the lower spot that it now resides in, there is a suspicion that this may have some relation to an increase in the incidence of rsi... but there's a causation/correlation debate about that too.)

By: chris

chris — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:54:02 +0000

I use Ctrl-R often for going back in history. Type that combo, then begin typing the command you want to recall. Retype the combo to select other matches, then hit enter when you find the one you want.wget will also resume downloads with the -c switch, and download from a list of URLs in a text file with the -i filename.txt switch.

By: Richard Chapman

Richard Chapman — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 21:50:11 +0000

Nice post and a great headline. I think it’s true though. The command line is a lot of fun once you get to know it and after it saves your butt from a world of hurt. But it’s losing it’s dominance as the scare tactic of choice by Microsofties to “drivers”.