From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 9 02:13:17 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 909B2106566C for ; Mon, 9 May 2011 02:13:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from aimass@yabarana.com) Received: from mail-iy0-f182.google.com (mail-iy0-f182.google.com [209.85.210.182]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68EEA8FC0C for ; Mon, 9 May 2011 02:13:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: by iyj12 with SMTP id 12so5679326iyj.13 for ; Sun, 08 May 2011 19:13:16 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.231.113.194 with SMTP id b2mr4025277ibq.103.1304907196338; Sun, 08 May 2011 19:13:16 -0700 (PDT) Sender: aimass@yabarana.com Received: by 10.231.30.202 with HTTP; Sun, 8 May 2011 19:13:16 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 22:13:16 -0400 X-Google-Sender-Auth: _bn-8hRQHZUtTkiHmKxwR068hSk Message-ID: From: Alejandro Imass To: John or Judy Hixson Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Newbie Needing Help X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 02:13:17 -0000 On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 8:17 PM, John or Judy Hixson wrote: > At the risk of being told to get out of here and never come back (until you know enough to not need to come back), I need help on some very elementary stuff. I haven't found anywhere else to ask these questions and am therefore taking my chances. > Hey John welcome to FreeBSD. Good honest questions are almost always answered. If you try to be a smart ass your newbiness will shine right through and people will avoid you. But making simple honest questions like you've done will get you help here for sure. FreeBSD is much like any Unix so may I suggest you first read on some generic Unix, and mostly anything in that respect will apply to FreeBSD, Linux and any and all Unixes, mostly anyway. The first need to change is your Windoze vocabulary, so the "command line" is called a "shell". Next you will need to eventually master a text editor. The are literally hundreds of text-editor in the Unix world but there are two predominant editor cultures: the vi guys and the Emacs people. In Unix, freeBSD and the Linux world there seem to be these tribal/religious wars about things: vi vs. emacs, gnome vs. kde, MySQL v.s PostgreSQL, anything vs. sendmail, top posting vs. bottom posting, etc. etc. etc. In almost everything you will find zealots in the *NIX world. I am an Emacs fan myself, but you will need to learn vi regardless of the editor you later decide to use. This is because vi is installed as part of the base system in almost all *nix flavors. You will probably even need vi to configure your base system in order to install anything else, so do yourself a favor and get a vi tutorial. The same goes with pagers: "less" is is better than "more" (pun intended) but more will probably be part of any Unix system whereas less will probably need to installed unless you are in the Linux world where less is actually more, or is it less ? ;-) Anyway, get yourself a tutorial and soft introduction on Unix in general, and on vi so you can move around. I think that Chapter 3 of the FBSD Handbook does a great job: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/basics.html Good luck, -- Alejandro Imass