Essential Topics

This chapter describes nearly everything you will need to know to successfully complete your course work. It is a good idea to become comfortable with all of the topics in this chapter as early as possible so that you are not struggling with your environment while working on your assignments. The best way to become comfortable with Unix, as with most any computer topic, is to sit down at the computer and experiment. Use the information here as a guide and don't be afraid to try new things. Of course, you must exercise caution with some commands such as rm, which removes files.

Each of these sections is a basic introduction to the variety of options available to the described tools. It is almost a trademark of Unix to provide a plethora of options to each available command. To learn more about each tool, consult chapter  Getting Help for ideas of where to look. Among other things, this chapter explains the commonly used and verbose man program. Some topics are also further covered in Chapter , Advanced Topics.