Basically, in the Bash environment, an administrator is working with text commands. An example of such a command is ls, which can be used to display a list of files in a directory. Bash has some useful features to make working with these line commands as easy as possible. Some shells offer the option to complete a command automatically. Bash has this feature, but it does more than just complete commands. Bash can complete almost everything: not just commands, but also file names and shell variables.


Using Automatic Command Completion
Using this feature is as simple as pressing the Tab key. For example, the cat line command is used to display the contents of an ASCII text file. The name of this file, which is in the current directory, is this_is_a_file. So, to open this file, the user can type cat thi and then press the Tab key. If the directory has only one file that starts with the letters t-h-i, Bash automatically completes the name of the file. If the directory has other files that start with the same letters, Bash will complete the name of the file as far as possible. For example, let’s say that...

This Code of Conduct covers your behavior as a member of the Ubuntu Community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, Web site, IRC channel, install-fest, public meeting, or private correspondence. The Ubuntu Community Council will arbitrate in any dispute over the conduct of a member of the community.

Be considerate. Your work will be used by other people, and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you make will affect users and colleagues, and we expect you to take those consequences into account when making decisions. For example, when we are in a feature freeze, please don't upload dramatically new versions of critical system software, as other people will be testing the frozen system and not be expecting big changes.

Be respectful. The Ubuntu community and its members treat one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable contribution to Ubuntu. We may not always agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It's important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not...

Ubuntu is driven by a philosophy of software freedom that hope will spread and bring the benefits of software technology to all parts of the globe. The latest version of the Ubuntu Philosophy can be found at: www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/philosophy


Free and Open Source Software
Ubuntu is a community-driven project to create an operating system and a full set of applications using free and Open Source software. At the core of the Ubuntu Philosophy of Software Freedom are these core philosophical ideals:

1. Every computer user should have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, share, change, and improve their software for any purpose without paying licensing fees.

2. Every computer user should be able to use their software in the language of their choice.

3. Every computer user should be given every opportunity to use software, even if they work under a disability.

Ubuntu philosophy is reflected in the software produce and included in distribution. As a result, the licensing terms of the software distribute are measured against philosophy using the Ubuntu License Policy.

When you install Ubuntu almost all of the software installed already meets these ideals, and working to ensure that...

The Web is great for one-way communications: someone posts a web page and someone else views it. Even in online forums, discussions may span days. E-mail is a faster communication method, and is bi-directional, but is not instant. Instant messaging (IM) systems allow realtime communications with groups of people.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was one of the first IM protocols. (IRC predates most IM protocols by more than a decade.) There are plenty of IRC clients for Dapper, including the graphical xchat and text-based irssi. But IRC is only one type of IM protocol available today. Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, and Napster all have their own IM protocols. Beyond proprietary systems, the open-source Jabber protocol is growing in popularity; Jabber is essentially IRC over an encrypted channel.

Although you could download a specific IM client for every protocol, it is much more convenient to have one client that supports them all. Gaim in an IM client that ships with Ubuntu and supports eight of the most common IM protocols. To run Gaim, go to Applications -> Internet -> Gaim Instant Messanger. When Gaim first starts, you will need to add an account. Accounts specify IM servers and your identities...

The wireless-tools package, which is installed on Ubuntu systems by default, provides several commands for probing and configuring wireless interfaces and networks. You can execute the man wireless command to get information about the wireless-tools package, learn how and where it is installed by various Linux distributions, and view a list of the commands that this package provides. The wireless-tools commands that I find most valuable are the iwconfig and iwlist commands.

The iwconfig command displays information much like the ifconfig command, providing information about the wireless status of all or specific Ethernet interfaces on a system. The following example shows the output of the iwconfig command, querying the wireless Ethernet interface that was installed

$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:”wvh” Nickname:”okuwlan”
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.427 GHz Access Point:
00:03:93:E9:89:22
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry limit:8 RTS thr=1536 B Fragment thr=1536 B
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/0 Signal level=95/255 Noise level=0/0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

As you can see, this provides much of the same information as that provided by the ifconfig command, but it also includes wireless-specific information. The iwconfig command can also be used...

The Linux kernel includes drivers for many popular PCI wireless cards, PCMCIA wireless adapters, and USB wireless adapters. On Ubuntu systems, wireless Ethernet interfaces are configured in the same way as wired Ethernet interfaces.

If no Linux driver is available for your wireless card, all is not lost. Thanks to the cleverness of the folks in the open source community, a Linux kernel module and related utilities called ndiswrapper enables you to use the Microsoft Windows drivers for much of the networking hardware that is not yet natively supported by Linux. Installing these utilities, installing Windows drivers under Linux, and configuring your system to automatically start loading the kernel module.

Using systems that have both wired and wireless interfaces is quite common nowadays. Even though wireless specifications such as 802.11g and the upcoming 802.11n provide high communication speeds. Ubuntu’s administrative Networking application makes this easy enough to do manually, but an automated solution is also available in the Networking Manager application.

Wireless network adapters are configured in basically the same way as standard networking adapters, except that they require some additional, wireless-specific information. To configure a wireless networking adapter on your Ubuntu system, connect it to your...