Novice at Terminal

[phatgenius]

So I am not very familiar with Terminal and how to use it, and I know I will probably get a lot of crap because of it but what the heck. How hard is terminal to use? Is there anywhere I can read up on how to use it etc... Also can I use terminal to mod my iPhone on an older iBook G4? If anyone cares to help that would be great.

[idugcoal]

Terminal can be confusing, especially for a newcomer, but don't let it discourage you. In all of the guides I've seen on this site, any Terminal commands are laid out for you, to the point where you can practically copy them from the site and paste them into your Terminal window.

When you open a Terminal window, you'll see some (what appears to be) gibberish, followed by a blinking cursor. Entering commands and pressing Return executes the commands. For the most part, if you follow the guides on this site, you don't need to know what each command does, you just copy & paste. However, knowing how Terminal interprets commands, and what certain commands do, can be indispensable for troubleshooting, or in the (increasingly rare) case that a guide is incorrect.

Here's a list of OS X's terminal commands that I refer to when I want to know more: http://www.ss64.com/osx/ It won't really do you any good to read it, just keep it open in a background tab and refer to it when you're curious. Terminal can be intimidating, but it allows you to do things that can't be done anywhere else.

If it helps, I started using Terminal about six months ago, and I'm very comfortable with it. As you begin to use it, you'll understand its power, and you'll see why the "old pros" scoff at such niceties as a GUI.

[Kyle Matthews]

Plus most of the stuff you need to do we have step by step guides for. And SSH now gives you drag and drop from Windows and OS X both.