Terminal language

Where do you find or learn what to type in terminal to check things out?
For example, I found by typing "top" will give info on what is going on with RAM and such.
Then my ISP had me type in ping and something else to check connections with them.

http://www.miniapples.org/Articles/terminal.html

don't mess around with anything that uses sudo or su otherwise you are just asking for trouble

trpnmonkey41 said:

http://www.miniapples.org/Articles/terminal.html

don't mess around with anything that uses sudo or su otherwise you are just asking for trouble

Click to expand...

Are you saying that about "sudo" because of the lack of security when doing that?? If not, then why?
I only had to use sudo once. I had an issue with earthlink (UGH) with an application of theirs that I downloaded (BIG mistake) embedded itself deep into my puter and I couldn't get rid of it because it was owned by root. I had to go in as root to get rid of the stupid thing. But as soon as I did that, I hurried and logged out of there and logged back in as me with password etc....

Terminal is the good 'ol unix bash command line shell (a little trivia here: bash is an acroynm standing for Bourne Again Shell - bash is an enhanced version of the original unix bourne shell).

Happily, bash is also the standard shell for most Linux systems, and so if you can pick up a good command line shell reference for Linux, you will have what you need... more or less. Mac OS X's Terminal based bash is from the underlying FreeBSD unix system that beats in the heart of every Mac, and there are minor differences between Linux bash and FreeBSD bash, but they are quite small. Nonetheless, if you can find a FreeBSD bash reference guide you are REALLY on top of it.

However, any good Linux shell reference will do nicely. A particularly good one that I use, and which is fairly recent, is the book "A Practical Guide to LInux Commands, Editors and Shell Programming" by Mark G. Sobell. This is a weighty tome, but it covers it all. The command line interface is AMAZINGLY powerful - remember the unix community had many, many years to enhance this thing before those new fangled GUI's like Mac OS X came along!