I have a friend who switched to Linux because they didn’t want to pay for a new license for Windows and thereby end up running modern Windows. Theyâ

The Shell is a Program // -dealloc

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2024-12-27 04:00:03

I have a friend who switched to Linux because they didn’t want to pay for a new license for Windows and thereby end up running modern Windows. They’re not very computer-minded, so troubleshooting doesn’t come naturally, and anything that requires dropping down to the command line is something that has to be done by rote. And on one occasion, when I asked them to run something, they asked where to type it in.

If you are a technical person familiar with Linux, you know there’s only one place to type things in: “the shell”. Or “the command line”, or “the terminal”. Technically these are all slightly different things, but those distinctions don’t usually matter. The important thing is that the shell is the default place to run any textual command. So it threw me when my friend asked “where do I put this in”.

I started thinking about how to explain this. The terminal is basically talking directly to the operating system. That’s why text commands go there.

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