In advance of that, you can learn some basics by logging in to your course account and executing learn, and going through the 'files' course. (Optionally you might also want to go through the 'editor', 'vi', and 'morefiles' courses, although there's material in there you may not need here.) Alternatively, you might want to consider looking at some of the many WWW pages for people getting started with Unix. The best places to start are:
In addition, you can find useful pages at:
Be aware that some instructions about Unix, particularly about things like logging in and out, are specific to individual universities, so the Maryland OIT pages are the most reliable. However, most Unix commands introduced on these WWW pages are standard across all Unix systems, and some of the other WWW pages are nicely organized and worth looking at.The following books may also be of interest, and although I haven't looked at them, they come from the O'Reilly series, which is generally quite good.
Editing Files
You may use the text editor of your choice, but emacs is
strongly recommended. To learn Emacs, you may wish to use the
self-instructional tutorial. To use it, start up emacs
(don't use a filename on the command line) and type C-h t (that's control-h
followed by t). Instructions are given on the screen. You can also see the
following Emacs instructional sites and/or quick reference cards. Once
you've learned how to use emacs, pick a quick reference card you like,
print it out, and keep it handy.
Using E-mail
You may use the e-mail program of your choice.
The following links may be useful:
Return to the course home page.