After you have logged in

• Welcome to linuxzoo
  • Essential Linux
    • Unix Overview
      • After you have logged in

Once you have logged in, you are presented with a simple prompt from which you interface to the Unix environment. It is this which has promoted the idea that Microsoft Windows is a user interface for most people, while the Unix interface is just for geeks! In fact, within a few hours of using the text interface, things can be done in a natural and powerful way which will make it impossible to return to 'klanky' Microsoft Windows.

To further add to your difficulties, the cursor keys which you are so used to are not always well supported in Unix. The reason for this is complicated, but basically telnet is still based on the terminals of a decade ago. These had various modes of operation, but standards were not always completely understood. The best and most reliable standard for a terminal is called 'vt100', and is the standard mode which window's telnet operates in. This mode did not have cursor keys. In vt100, you can still have something like cursor keys using the control key, and these are

• Move Up - CONTROL+J (hold down the CTRL key and press and release J)
• Move Down - CONTROL+K
• Move Left - CONTROL+H
• Move Right - CONTROL+L

Other control key combinations are also programmed to do special and useful things in the shells we will be using - more of this later.

Linuxzoo created by Gordon Russell.
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