[TIPS] Learn Linux/Unix CMD Line the Easy Way

Hey Guys. This time it's going to be a very simple and short post about something I found in the Net recently. See, we have to admit that most of the powerful tool (heck even Operating System) are Linux / Unix base. As much as we love our Windows 8.1 interface, but the power still goes to command-line. And we know that most of the security tools are best run in command-line (unless you have a choice to run it in GUI). So mastering command line to a certain level would be a great upper hand for any pentesters or sys admins to do their job.

As a Linux noobiez like me, I love command-line tools but sometimes I always need refer back to Google and find what are the correct command to type in and get what I want. This usually happens when I want to do some configuration in the web server, apache, network configuration and almost anything in Linux can be done using command-line. Finding the solution in Google is like finding a needle in the haystack. without the right "search engine grammar" you would not find what you want to find. Yes, you may say "Why don't you use the man page in    the Linux OS itself? They already incorporated all the commands you want there." Well my noob answer would be, "Yeah they did, but I need a manual on how to use the man page in Linux OS". Unless you are a command-line Guru it would be hard for you to traverse through the man pages. So wouldn't it be nice if there is a one stop tool that can show you all the command that you want to find and been explained in detail? How if you are able to run that tool in your environment in your machine? Would be cool isn't it?

Well the wait is no longer needed. Someone actually thought it through (founder is IDAN KAMARA **hail to you brother**) and a beautiful open source tool called Explain Shell is created. There are two ways to use it. One you can browse to www.explainshell.com and use the tool from there or you can always download the codes and run it in your machine without the Internet. How awesome is that? This site contains 29761 parsed manpages from sections 1 and 8 found in Ubuntu's manpage repository. 

I have tried this tool for almost a week plus now and I am very satisfied with its functionality. It has color codes, differentiation is superb, the explanation is good (especially for layman's) and it is interactive as well. So this would be a great start for Linux / Unix command line learners to learn their stuff here. Well as Sheldon use to say "You are playing with powers beyond your Ken" that's what it has been when noobies wants to learn command-line. but now we noobs can tell "Well buddy, your ken can kiss my barbie now" because we found a way to learn it effectively.

Until my next post, see ya!

ExplainShell website

www.explainshell.com