Book Image

Learn Linux Quickly

By : Ahmed AlKabary
Book Image

Learn Linux Quickly

By: Ahmed AlKabary

Overview of this book

Linux is one of the most sought-after skills in the IT industry, with jobs involving Linux being increasingly in demand. Linux is by far the most popular operating system deployed in both public and private clouds; it is the processing power behind the majority of IoT and embedded devices. Do you use a mobile device that runs on Android? Even Android is a Linux distribution. This Linux book is a practical guide that lets you explore the power of the Linux command-line interface. Starting with the history of Linux, you'll quickly progress to the Linux filesystem hierarchy and learn a variety of basic Linux commands. You'll then understand how to make use of the extensive Linux documentation and help tools. The book shows you how to manage users and groups and takes you through the process of installing and managing software on Linux systems. As you advance, you'll discover how you can interact with Linux processes and troubleshoot network problems before learning the art of writing bash scripts and automating administrative tasks with Cron jobs. In addition to this, you'll get to create your own Linux commands and analyze various disk management techniques. By the end of this book, you'll have gained the Linux skills required to become an efficient Linux system administrator and be able to manage and work productively on Linux systems.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)

The man page

The whatis command gives you a brief description of what a command does; however, it doesn't teach you how to use a command. For that, you can use the man pages.

The man page is a manual page that has proper documentation to help you understand how to use a command. The same as when you buy a new phone, you get a manual that shows you how to use your phone and how to update your software on your phone, etc.

In general, if you want to read the man page of a command, you can run:

man command_name

For example, if you want to view the man page of the touch command, you can run the man touch command:

elliot@ubuntu-linux:~$ man touch
Figure 1: touch man page

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, the touch man page shows you how to use the command, and it also lists and explains all the command options.

Table 9 shows you how to move around while browsing man pages.

man keys What it does
Space Scrolls forward one page.
Ctrl+F Scrolls forward one page...