Command Line Tips

The command line is where all of the action takes place in Linux. If you seriously want to use Linux you will need to become familiar in it's use.

This site has two pages of command line guides on it. I suggest you bookmark it and study up on bash.

To open a terminal within Gnome click on Applications>System Tools>Terminal. I prefer Konsole because it is black. It's located in Applications>System Tools>Konsole.

Most tools/programs in Linux come with a manual called a man page. You can view this manual by typing in:

man program_name

When you are done reading just press 'q' to quit and return to the command line. Additional help is usually available by typing in:

program_name --help

A tool used inside bash you will need to become familiar with is the vi editor. It is a command line text editor that's been around the block for 30yrs or so. It works similar to how Notepad works in Windows, only you have to use the keyboard to navigate the file instead of being able to click the mouse. The Vi Lover's Home Page is a great place to start learning about it. The correct syntax for running the vi editor is:

vi filename

To install and remove software in command line Fedora comes with YUM package manager. More on this here. For now the two important commands are pretty self explanitory:

yum update

yum install program_name

A useful program is lshw(list hardware.) Install it using yum:

yum install lshw

Then run it by typing lshw -short.

lshw -short

On my machine it gives the following output:

[retarp@bigrig ~]$ lshw -short WARNING: you should run this program as super-user. H/W path Device Class Description =================================================== system Computer /0 bus Motherboard /0/0 memory 8001MiB System memory /0/1 processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz /0/100 bridge C55 Host Bridge /0/100/0.1 memory RAM memory /0/100/0.2 memory RAM memory /0/100/0.3 memory RAM memory /0/100/0.4 memory RAM memory /0/100/0.5 memory RAM memory /0/100/0.6 memory RAM memory /0/100/0.7 memory RAM memory /0/100/1 memory RAM memory /0/100/1.1 memory RAM memory /0/100/1.2 memory RAM memory /0/100/1.3 memory RAM memory /0/100/1.4 memory RAM memory /0/100/1.5 memory RAM memory /0/100/1.6 memory RAM memory /0/100/2 memory RAM memory /0/100/2.1 memory RAM memory /0/100/2.2 memory RAM memory /0/100/3 bridge C55 PCI Express bridge /0/100/3/0 bridge NF200 PCIe 2.0 switch for mainboards /0/100/3/0/0 bridge NF200 PCIe 2.0 switch for mainboards /0/100/3/0/2 bridge NF200 PCIe 2.0 switch for mainboards /0/100/3/0/2/0 bridge NF200 PCIe 2.0 switch for Quadro Plex S4 / Tesla S870 / Tesla S1070 /0/100/3/0/2/0/0 bridge NF200 PCIe 2.0 switch for Quadro Plex S4 / Tesla S870 / Tesla S1070 /0/100/3/0/2/0/0/0 display G92 [GeForce 9800 GX2] /0/100/3/0/2/0/2 bridge NF200 PCIe 2.0 switch for Quadro Plex S4 / Tesla S870 / Tesla S1070 /0/100/3/0/2/0/2/0 display G92 [GeForce 9800 GX2] /0/100/7 bridge C55 PCI Express bridge /0/100/9 memory RAM memory /0/100/a bridge MCP51 LPC Bridge /0/100/a.1 bus MCP51 SMBus /0/100/a.2 memory RAM memory /0/100/b bus MCP51 USB Controller /0/100/b/1 usb2 bus OHCI Host Controller /0/100/b/1/3 input Back-UPS NS 1250 FW:7.g1 .D USB FW:g1 /0/100/b/1/6 input G500 /0/100/b.1 bus MCP51 USB Controller /0/100/b.1/1 usb1 bus EHCI Host Controller /0/100/d storage MCP51 IDE /0/100/e storage MCP51 Serial ATA Controller /0/100/f storage MCP51 Serial ATA Controller /0/100/10 bridge MCP51 PCI Bridge /0/100/10/7 bus TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) /0/100/10.1 multimedia MCP51 High Definition Audio /0/100/14 eth0 bridge MCP51 Ethernet Controller WARNING: output may be incomplete or inaccurate, you should run this program as super-user.

There are two commands that will give you the clock speeds of your cpu and your memory:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

dmidecode --type 17

Note: dmidecode must be run with root access! It also only returns speeds if your hardware supports it.

Want to know what version of Fedora/Red Hat you are running?

cat /etc/redhat-release

Like this page? See the rest of my Fedora guides!