All Platforms

Use the man command to look up commands in the manual. From a Terminal or shell, type:

      man man

Remember to press the < Enter > or < Return > key at the end of every command: otherwise the computer will not do anything. For example, the command ls is short for "list" and lists all the files and directories in the current directory, so typing:

      man ls

and pressing < Enter > or < Return > would give you the manual page for the list command, ls. The behaviour of commands can be changed by typing a so-called flag after the name of the command, for example to get a simple listing of files, you would type ls, but to get a long listing, use the -l flag like this:

      ls -l

If you don't know the name of the command, you can use the apropos command (or type man -k, where k is short for "keyword") to get a list of all the commands that match, e.g. apropos python would list all the commands that refer to the word "python".

Cygwin

• If you are experienced with Windows, there is a Quick Start Guide for those more experienced with Windows
• If you come from a UNIX background, there is a Quick Start Guide for those more experienced with UNIX
• Take a look at the manual that comes with Cygwin, which is available online and in PDF: Cygwin User's Guide

Linux

• There is a nice series of interactive tutorials on using Linux, called Linux Survival.

Mac OS X

• A gentle introduction to Mac OS X is available from Learning Mac OS X but this does not cover using the Terminal.
• O'Reilly is a very well-respected publisher of books about UNIX and open source technologies; their "MacDevCenter" has a great series of hands-on tutorials about Learning the Mac OS X Terminal