Now that you can log in and move easily between directories and see the files in them, you'll want to be able to edit those files. To do this, you'll need a program that allows you to edit the characters in a file. If you are used to working on Microsoft Windows, you have probably used programs such as Microsoft Notepad, WordPad, or Word to do this. As you know, these programs are not available in Linux. But, there are several other choices for editors, all of which are free. In this chapter, we will use an editor program called Emacs. Other possibilities are programs such as nano, vi, vim, and gedit. Programmers have strong feelings about which editor to use, so if you already have a favorite, you can skip this section.

If you want to use Emacs, download and install it by typing sudo apt-get install emacs. Once installed, you can run Emacs simply by typing emacs filename, where filename is the name of the file you want to edit. If the...