Konsole Power

The combined power of the console and the shell (i.e. Bash) enables us to perform thousands of tasks; here are a few examples:

* detailed and extensive system-wide configuration and administration,
* software installation, updates, and removal,
* file and folder administration and manipulation (using i.e. Midnight Commander),
* sharing, accessing, and transferring data between machines using SSH, NFS, or Samba,
* managing personal email (mutt, pine), web browsing (lynx, elinks), reading discussion groups (slrn),
* listening to music (mpd/mpc, mp3blaster, xmms-shell),
* burning CD’s (cdrecord, cdrdao) and DVD’s (growiofs),
* chatting via IRC or via many popular instant messaging networks like Jabber, ICQ, etc!
* extensive system monitoring and troubleshooting (top, netstat, io, iptraf).

Why use the console if there is GUI?
Indeed… Why the heck should you use the console (except for sorting out system crashes)? Isn’t it way easier and faster to click through things? Linux was supposed to be as easy as Windows you said! And now you come up with this geeky stuff…

Take it easy. Nobody says you have to use the console. You can configure your system and perform all the standard operations in the GUI mode. But.. I’m not sure you really want to. Using the GUI is easy but remember two things: the console is faster and it is more efficient.

For example:

* Let’s delete a file. For instance, the file megafile.txt located in our home folder
o In a terminal: rm ~/megafile.txt (the file name is auto-completed when you enter TAB)
o In GUI: Double-click the “Home” icon on the Desktop. Then find the proper file, select it and use the right mouse button to choose ‘Delete’.
* Let’s do some configuration now. For instance, let’s configure the Internet access via DHCP
o In a terminal: sudo dhclient eth0 (and enter your password)
o In a GUI: Click on the icon representing the Network on the desktop toolbar. A network configuration applet shows up. Choose a network card represented by eth0, and click Activate. If it does not work, then enter the specific configuration for this card, enter the root password, set the DHCP option (probably static IP has been set before), click OK, and again click Activate on the network card. Finally, we can leave the applet.
* Let’s do some admin stuff now and start the Apache2 web server!
o In terminal: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start (and enter your password)
o In GUI: Choose System-%lt;Administration-%lt;Services from the GNOME menu. Then look for Apache2 server and select it. Click ‘Apply’ and close the applet.
* OK, the last example is the least geeky one. Let’s watch a movie in MPlayer!
o In terminal: mplayer /home/movies/Aviator/AviatorCD1.avi (of course using the TAB completion option for file names!)
o In GUI: In GNOME menu choose Applications-
These are only four examples. In each one, performing the exact same task was a couple times faster in terminal than in GUI. Of course it’s not always the case. Burning a DVD in console is for hardcore hackers only, since the growisofs program requires many parameters and typing them all manually is harder than choosing ‘Burn as DVD’ in a program like K3B or GnomeBaker. In general however, if we care for efficiency in our work, it is a very good idea to make friends with the terminal. It will take time to get to know the basics, but for a Windows power user like you, the learning curve should not be long and the benefits are faster and more efficient work.