58: Hardware Hacker or Software Hacker?

I suspect that the Raspberry Pi crowd is mostly hardware savvy (and software naive). I could be wrong, of course. If you've followed this blog you know that I am just the opposite. The reason I bring this up is to recommend some software tricks that could make the things easier for Linux software beginners.

If you have the time you should start by Googling "linux quick reference" (or similar). The trouble with that approach is that you'll get a few thousand hits. So I'll make my own short list of topics you might check out:

Learn about--

-- the man command (on-line manual pages -- generally cryptic, but you can google more info)
-- directories (keep your "home directory" clean)
-- file permissions (chmod command)
-- the .profile file (add your own commands in your "~/bin" directory")
-- a test: what does the "~" character mean?
-- harder test: why won't the shell automatically execute a command in the current directory?