Honing your Command Line Kung Fu

Being from a heavy Windows background, the command line isn’t one of the things that you spend a lot of time at when administering systems. However, a couple of years ago I made it a priority to get more comfortable at the command line in not only Windows but *nix operating systems as well.

The sad part of all of this is that I still know people who are afraid of the command line and run away from it like a little kid does from needles. For those people who are afraid, you shouldn’t be. There are some advantages to using the command line that you just can’t get from the GUI. With the command line you can:

• Automate repetitive tasks – Who doesn’t like to do less work?
• Track your previous commands – You defiantly can't do this with a GUI. Once you click OK or Apply you can’t see the changes you made.
• A sense of accomplishment. Who doesn’t like learning new things. It would take years to learn everything that you can do at a command prompt.

So today I am going to give you a couple of resources to help you master your Command Line Kung Fu.

• commandlinefu.com
• Command Line Kung Fu Blog
• Microsoft’s Command-line reference A-Z
• Linux Commands – A practical reference

If you have any sites you want to share, leave them in the comments and I will update the post!

Enjoy!
Matt