Mislav Jurić

Tag: shell

  • Linux Tutorial Series – 14 – Starting a shell session

    Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

    To start a shell session, find Terminal on your Linux distribution (via the graphical user interface) and click on it. That should start a shell session, which means you can type in commands!

    We will be writing some commands in the very next article, so stay tuned!

  • Linux Tutorial Series – 12 – What is a shell?

    Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

    The shell, the shell… We all heard that. We know you can type some command in the shell in a Linux environment and get some output. But what does the shell actually mean?

    “A shell is a program that runs commands”, says (Ward, 2014)⁠. That is basically it. You type some commands in, the shell executes them, then you get some output. Shell scripts, another popular term, are essentially just commands typed in a file called a shell script; so the shell has the same job – execute commands.

    There are multiple kinds of shells. You can find more information here: (“5 Most Frequently Used Open Source Shells for Linux,” n.d.)

    Before I end, it is important to note that programs like Terminal are not actually shells – they are graphical user interfaces running shell on your behalf. (Barrett, 2016)⁠ Figure 1 depicts this. This program with a graphical user interface, called a terminal emulator, interacts with the shell. (Shotts, 2019)⁠

    Figure 1 – Relationship between graphical user interfaces to the shell and the shell itself (modeled after figure on page 15 of (Barrett, 2016)⁠)

    Hope you learned something new!

    References

    5 Most Frequently Used Open Source Shells for Linux. (n.d.). Retrieved December 22, 2019, from https://www.tecmint.com/different-types-of-linux-shells/

    Barrett, D. J. (2016). Linux pocket guide (3rd ed.). O’Reilly Media. Page 15

    Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Page 26

    Ward, B. (2014). How Linux Works: What Every Superuser Should Know (2nd ed.). No Starch Press. Page 12