Get started with Unix command line, VIM and SH: for the total (windows) newbie | Hacker News Reader

Get started with Unix command line, VIM and SH: for the total (windows) newbie

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14 pointsttty7 comments

First instruction for a total newbie is telling them to switch to a root shell (and later having them perform a recursive remove). Nothing could possibly wrong with that tutorial.

I've said that they have to take care. I don't really like to always type "sudo" in front of each command, but is up to the user what wants to do. I didn't had a problem until now... Maybe I'm doing it bad, but I couldn't find better.

Type sudo. You get used to it pretty quickly.

Also, side note: the canonical way to enter insert mode in vim is via the "i" key. Vimmers work hard to stay on the home row.

You're not doing anything that needs root access. Why would you need to ever type sudo??

This doesn't seem particularly well written. If you're going to explain the directory structure, you could talk about the root directory, the home directory (and shortcuts to it), the things that . and .. actually refer to, maybe refer to man hier. Oh wait, it doesn't refer to man at all.

The example for moving a folder's contents is just wrong, or at least I've never seen a system where mv ./a ./b moves a's contents into b. The example of recursive copy is stupid because it doesn't use nested directories and thus doesn't explain the recursion at all.

Vim. Is it read mode or view mode or what? I don't get why this introduction that only explains how to get into insert mode and save & quit is useful. Might as well point them to a more newbie-friendly editor.

All Unix scripts start with hash-bang /bin/bash?

This post is a rather poorly selected assortment of bad examples poorly explained, and I honestly can't imagine a total newbie finding much help here. More likely he'll just turn away confused.

Hello, clarry!

This was a cookbook I've made from learning unix. That was almost everything I needed to do with unix on my amazon ec2 instance.

The move contents was wrong, already fixed it.

"The example of recursive copy is stupid because it doesn't use nested directories and thus doesn't explain the recursion at all.": The example doesn't show the full feature the copy with "-r" but you know how to copy a folder.

"Vim. Is it read mode or view mode or what?": the first time I've used VIM I was like "What the hell?? -some keys works and other not? really messed up" because I didn't know there were 2 modes (or more). I've even searched on google how to type special keys in VIM. I think this is very helpful to newbies.

"All Unix scripts start with hash-bang /bin/bash?": I don't know, but is the minimum you need to know to write a simple bash script to restart a server or do some tasks.

This is for someone that don't use unix to work, just use unix to deploy apps. If is not useful to nobody, at least for me it is ;) that was one of the main reasons of the post. The contents were previously stored in a google doc, which was ugly.

Thanks for your interest,

Hello,

I'd like to provide a little feedback, if you don't mind. :-) As the title suggests, your article is an extremely fast guide to getting started with Linux, and that's great.

But it reads with undertones of mild indignation, which I felt was something that you didn't need to pass on to your audience.

Cheers

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