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Starting with Linux 1
Before icons and windows took over computer screens, you typed
commands to interact with most computers. On UNIX systems, from
which Linux was derived, the program used to interpret and manage
commands was referred to as the shell.
No matter which Linux distribution you are using, you can always count on
one thing being available to you: the shell. It provides a way to create executable
script files, run programs, work with file systems, compile computer
code, operate a system, and manage the computer. Although the shell is less
intuitive than common graphic user interfaces (GUIs), most Linux experts
consider the shell to be much more powerful than GUIs. Shells have been
around a long time, and many advanced features have been built into them.
The Linux shell illustrated in this chapter is called the bash shell, which stands
for Bourne Again Shell. The name is derived from the fact that bash is compatible
with the first UNIX shell: the Bourne shell (named after its creator,
and represented by the sh command). While bash is included with most
distributions, and considered a standard, other shells are available. Other
popular shells include the C shell (csh), which is popular among BSD UNIX
users, and the Korn shell (ksh), which is popular among UNIX System V
users.
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