Tux Training

irssi is a command line IRC client for unix-based systems. It’s relatively simple to use. To install:

• on Fedora: yum -install irssi
• on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install irssi
• on openSuse: zypper in irssi
• run the application: irssi

Usage

When the application opens type: /connect “irc_channel” and press enter. As an example:

/connect irc.freenode.net

• /join “#channel” “optional_password”
  • exampe /join kde

And that’s it.

naim is a command line AIM client for unix-based systems. It’s relatively simple to use. To install:

• on Fedora: yum -install naim
• on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install naim
• on Suse I was unable to find a suitable package. So i grabbed the source from here
  • extract the package: tar -xjvf naim-0.11.8.3.1.tar.bz2
  • change to the directory: cd naim*
  • configure: ./configure
  • gain root access: su (and type admin password)
  • make
  • make install
• run the application: naim

When the application opens type: /connect “screename” and press enter, then enter your password when prompted.

Usage

• You can scroll through your buddy list with the Tab button
• To add a buddy: addbuddy “screenname”

For more info on using naim

Another issue I see on the message boards quite frequently users are trying to get their heads around tar archiving utilities, and gzip/bzip2 compression utilities. It pays to keep in mind that in the Windows world both of these are packaged together in the .zip format. In the Linux world, as with most things, more control comes at the price of more complexity, as the two issues of archiving and compression are separated.

I guess the first thing we should do is discuss the difference. Compression is a means to shrink the physical size of a file in bytes. The technical aspects of how compression works is a bit beyond the scope of this guide, so suffice it to say that the computer uses an algorithm to combine redundant bytes of data together. Archiving on the other hand, is the act of combining several files together into one, for ease of backup and distribution, all the while keeping the individual file attributes and permissions intact.

Continue reading ‘Guide for tar, gzip, and bzip2’ »

In this entry we’re going to look at a few of the options for the copy, move and remove commands. Enjoy.

Continue reading ‘Expanding on cp, mv, and rm commands’ »

Be sure to review the commands below and feel free to give them a try on your system. You can download this blog as a PDF for further review here.

Continue reading ‘An Introduction to Linux Command Line Absolute Basics’ »