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kureyon	2010-08-02 , 10:22
Posts: 992 \| Thanked: 738 times \| Joined on Jun 2010 @ Low Earth Orbit	#6

Basically what paai said.

Originally Posted by mmurfin87

For instance, when I say how to use GCC, I mean what the hell is ./configure.

A lot of programs are written to be compatible across a whole range of unix-like/posix compatible systems. What configure does it try to work out what kind of system and environment you have and make the necessary changes to allow the program to compile correctly.

because I don't know what tar.gz is (ok I know its a linux zip file)

To be accurate, the tar bit denotes a bunch of files that have been archived and the gz bit denotes that the resulting tar file has been compressed using gzip.

and whats even more interesting/confusing is that I thought linux didn't have file extensions?

It does have "file extensions" to the extent that all filesystems allow you to name a file "somefilename.someextension", but it doesn't need them. Most programs couldn't care less what you named the files. The file extensions are mainly for convenience so you can see at a glance what a particular file is.

Eg to extract a .tar.gz file you do:

Code:

tar zxf myfile.tar.gz

If you rename myfile.tar.gz to myfile you could extract it just the same:

Code:

tar zxf myfile

On the command line I can type "vi blahblahblah" and it will open up a vi editor, or I can type "top" and it will show me stuff. Thats all good and fine, but how do I know what I can type?

If you press "Tab" twice it will show you a list of all the commands available from your current path (see "echo $PATH"), however the more useful answer is that you will "know what to type" as you get more experienced.

Why can I run vi from the command line but I have to type the full extension of other programs?

Not sure what you mean, got an example?

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