Grannie's Glossary of Terminal Terms

Intro

This little guide and list of terms is provided for those of us who are not Linux programmers. This is for all you teachers, parents, Squeakers, Scratchers, and the like who want to communicate better with your XO.

The glossary was started as a result of a collaboration between two OLPC Support Gang members, Caryl Bigenho, a retired teacher and Scott Dowdle, Sys Admin at Montana State University and president of the Bozeman Linux Users Group. It came about as part of an effort to get the XO to do some new and exciting things.

What is the Terminal Activity?

The Terminal Activity in Sugar is your way of communicating directly with your XO. If you know what and how to ask, there is a lot of information available to you this way. Also, sometimes you need to tell your XO to do something different. Communicating through the Terminal Activity will be the best way to do it.

What are these commands?

Some of the commands we well look at here will be understood by the computer because it has an interpreter, called a"shell," to translate them into machine language. The shell the XO uses is called "Bash."

Other commands will be understood because the computer has special programs that will translate some of the terms. Interestingly, if you learn terms that work on the XO, which uses Linux, a free open source programming language, most of the same terms will also work in the terminal mode of computers using Unix, which is not free and open source. This includes the Mac.

Why is Syntax important?

In this glossary you will find all sorts of useful commands. As you use them you have to be careful to type them correctly, or the computer won't know what you are talking about. That means you have to use the correct Syntax.

If you accidently put in or leave out spaces, transpose letters, or type the wrong letter, unexpected things can happen. You might accidently type something that will cause it to do something surprising, but most likely it will just sit there with one or more ?s staring you in the face. Or it may say it can't find something.

Don't worry about ruining your XO by typing the wrong thing. That isn't going to happen. The best reason for entering the terms correctly the first time is that you will waste time if you have to retype!