Command Line Commands

[paticpatic]

Could someone point me to beginners documentation to help me understand the Raspberry operating system commands. Examples of this would be sudo? What does it stand for as it seems this command is used a lot. Other useful info would be file and folder permissions. I have instructions about changing some config files and can't save them becasue I don't have permission? Maybe an explanation about the system file structure. I am not a Linx or Debian or Unix user as I have spent my commputing life in front of Windows. Many years ago in college was spent with Fortran cards that actually fed into a machine to run my programs and am using laugages of Ada and C++, and some VB in my professional life.

[DirkS]

You could start with the RPF documentation: http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentatio ... /README.md

[kr6x]

I'll assume you are asking about Raspbian OS, but almost all of the non-Windows Pi OSes will be similar. Raspbian is a Linux implementation derived from Debian Linux, and that means that documentation for Raspbian already exists online as documentation for Debian.

But Raspbian is a "light" version of Debian, meaning that many commands that are usually available in a Linux implementation may be absent.

In addition, Linux has built-in documentation. The "man" command is used to read manual pages that are in the Pi OS. It's "man sudo<Enter>" for example. Try "man command<Enter> for a short list of built-in commands, List the /bin/ and /usr/bin/ directories for a larger list of available commands. Understand that commands can be executed from nearly anywhere on the computer's directory structure. There are places for system maintenance commands: /sbin/ and /usr/sbin/.

sudo means you become super-user (or perhaps some other user) for the purposes of executing a command to do system administrator functions.

[rpdom]

But Raspbian is a "light" version of Debian

No it isn't. Everything that is available in Debian is available in Raspbian (bar a few x86 specific packages like flashplayer).

[paticpatic]

Thanks for the comments, they are very useful.

[RaTTuS]

man sudo
may also help [to a greater or lesser degree]
man man
may also lead you down the rabbit hole

[Joe Schmoe]

But Raspbian is a "light" version of Debian

No it isn't. Everything that is available in Debian is available in Raspbian...

This is one of those things, like many others, where the statement is both true and false - at the same time - depending on whether or not you want it to be true (i.e., whether it has a positive or a negative connotation in the mind of the speaker).

A good example of this is the following statement:

Code: Select all

C++ is an object-oriented language.

Obviously, if you think OO is a Good Thing, then you will like this to be a true statement.

However, no less a personage than B. Stroustrap himself says that it is not true. He goes on to say that "C++ supports many different programming paradigms, of which OO is but one".

So, you see, what he is reacting to is the claim that C++ is only OO or necessarily OO.

Anyway, for myself, I like to think of Raspbian as a light (and fluffy - and filled with calories) version of Debian.