[plug] more basic linux stuff

[Cameron Patrick]

Shayne O'Neill wrote:

| Ok. programs tend to be all stuffed in a directory called /usr/bin
| but you dont have to go there to type it in.

Yes.  You'll also find admin-type binaries in /usr/sbin and /sbin - by
default, this isn't in the path for normal users, only for root.  If you
need to run one of these as a normal user, you need to type in the full
directory too - often these programs don't work unless you're root
though.

| your system has a variable called ´path´ that points to this and a couple
| of other directories , so you can type it anywhere and it knows what to
| do.

You can see what the path is by typing
	echo $PATH
at the shell prompt.

| /usr/share/doc <-- lots of lots of documentation. This is the good stuff.

Yes!  In Debian, *every* package installs a /usr/share/doc/{packagename}/
directory.  You can also get a list of what files belong to a particular
package with dpkg -L; e.g.:

$ dpkg -L unison
/.
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/unison
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/unison
/usr/share/doc/unison/unison-manual.html
/usr/share/doc/unison/README.Debian
/usr/share/doc/unison/copyright
/usr/share/doc/unison/BUGS.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/unison/TODO.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/unison/unison-manual.txt.gz
/usr/share/doc/unison/unison-manual.ps.gz
/usr/share/doc/unison/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/unison/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc-base
/usr/share/doc-base/unison-manual
/usr/share/man
/usr/share/man/man1
/usr/share/man/man1/unison.1.gz

Here you can see that unison, a typical-ish example, has an executable
installed in /usr/bin, various documentation in /usr/share/doc/unison,
and a man page in /usr/share/man/man1 (which is what you see when you
type "man unison").

| and your best friend from now on;-
| man (name of the program)
| 
| brings up manual pages in lovely terse geek speak.

If you're new to Linux, you'll also want to know that you press 'q' to
quit.  Took me a while to figure out the first time I used it :-/

Cameron.