My mission was to go to a coffee shop and read up on an ebook that I have that delves into shell scripting. At this point in my evolution of Linux-geek related knowledge, shell scripting is for me.

See, it builds off of what I already know, and moves onto what I don’t know without too much of a leap. For example, if you’re using the bash shell, just type “history” and hit enter. What happens?

That’s right, you see a list of the commands that you’ve entered. Now, let’s say you look through the list, and you see a prior command that you’ve entered that you want to enter again. For me, let’s say I want to use command number 283, “sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.” All I have to do to make that shell command run again is enter

!283

press the enter key, and I’m off to the races. (Oh, wait, I guess I also have to enter my password for that command to work, but you get the idea.)

There is a lot more to shell scripting than what I’ve just described, but it is neat to start to learn some of the tricks of the shell.

Before I close, apparently I have been “tagged,” by a fellow ubuntu-chicago member, and I need to tag a few other people back. Ok, so here goes. I’ve been tagged by Kubuntu/KDE diehard Richard Johnson (aka nixternal), and I’m going to tag fellow Chicago-Ubuntu member Andrew Bassett, who helped me to get my wifi working on Xubuntu at our Chi-Ubuntu meeting, and Michael Stemle (aka manchicken), who is a nice guy and who knows a lot about AJAX.

So, Andrew, Michael . . . you’re it. Now you have to tag two other people.