When I started up my first computer I was very excited. I unpacked it from its box. Set it up on a table and turned it on. As the screen flickered into life my excitement mounted. Watching it boot up with some unknown messages scrolling up the screen my excitement became almost unbearable. Then there was a beep and a black screen with a flashing green block. My excitement flashed over into puzzlement. What am I supposed to do?

Welcome to the command line!

From those days of long ago, before that even, till today. Every operating system has a command line. It used to be the first thing that greeted you when you turned your computer on but now it is mostly hidden behind some clickable menu item on a pretty point'n'click graphical user interface.

In this case it is ok to feel like a dumb cluck because we all started from that position. Even Bill and Linus would have had much the same feeling the first time they looked at a command line. So what do people normally do when they come across an unknown situation? They ask for help.

This is exactly what we are going to do now. We are going to ask the computer for help. How? We just type

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