OS chapter 8
$ prompt
(Pronounced "dollar prompt") The linux command prompt displayed in the BASH shell or in a terminal window when you are logged on as an ordinary (nonroot) user
Launcher
A GUI object (a bar) on the left side of the ubuntu unity desktop that serves the same purpose as the OS X Dock and the pinned items features on the taskbar on the windows desktop.
Kickoff Application Launcher
A GUI object on the KDE GUI bundled with fedora that, when clicked, opens a menu (similar to the windows start menu) for launching programs.
live image
A bootable image of the OS that will run from disc or other bootable media without requiring that the OS be installed on the local compute.
shell command
A command entered through the CLI shell
path
A description that an OS uses to identify the location of a file or directory
absolute path
A directory path that begins with the top level in Linux, an absolute path begins with a forward slash (/) to indicate the root directory
command completion
A feature of Linux (and OS X Terminal UNIX) that completes what is entered at the command line with a command name of file or directory name.
switch users
A feature of most OS that allows the currently logged-on user to leave their apps and data open in memory, switching away so that another user can log in to a separate session
home directory
In Linux, a directory created for a user using the user's login name, and location under the /home directory. This is the one place in Linux where an ordinary user account has full control over files without logging in as the root account.
root account
In Linux, an all-powerful account that is used only when absolutely necessary to do advanced tasks. Ubuntu Linux comes with this account disabled in a way that no one can log in directly with the account but there is a way to use it temporarily whenever you need it for tasks such as creating or deleting users.
daemon
In Linux, software that runs in background until it is activated.
owner
In Linux, the user account that creates a file or directory. This term is also used in Windows
Apache HTTP server
Open source Web server software, originally written for UNIX, runs on Linux
command-line history
The Linux and UNIX (and OS X terminal) feature that saves command-line history in a file name bash_history
shell
The OS component that provides the character-mode user interface - processing commands and issuing error messages and other limited feedback.
world wide web WWW
The graphical internet consisting of a vast array of documents located on millions of specialized servers worldwide
X window
The program code used as the basis for many GUIs for linux of UNIX
X window system
The program code used as the basis for many GUIs for linux of UNIX
Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP
The protocol for transferring the files that make up the rich graphical web pages we view on the WWW. it includes the commands a web browser uses to request web pages from a web server to display on the screen of a local computer.
Ubuntu
A group of Linux distributions supported by a company named Canonical
Wildcard
A symbol that replaces any character or string of characters as a parameter in a CLI command
access mode number
A value assigned to a file permission in Linux. The user (owner), group and others each have a different access mode number calculated using the following values: read = 4, write = 2, and execute = 1
terminal window
A window in a Linux GUI that provides a command-line interface CLI for entering Linux shell commands.
BASH
An acronym for Bourne Again Shell; the Linux component (shell) that provides the character-mode user interface for entering and processing commands, issuing error messages, and other limited feedback
GNOME
An acronym for GNU network object model environment, a Linux GUI that uses the Linux X Windows system.
Web
An acronym for the term World Wide Web WWW
object code
An executable program, the result of compiling programming statements, that can be interpreted by a computer's CPU or OS and loaded into memory as a running program.
Linux
An open source OS based on UNIX that was developed by Linus Torvalds and others beginning in 1991
GNU
An organization created in 1984 to develop a free version of a UNIX-like OS. GNU, a recursive acronym for GNU's Not UNIX, has developed thousands of applications that run on UNIX and Linux platforms. Many are distributed with versions of Linux.
case-sensitive
In an OS, a feature that allows the OS to preserve the case used for the character in a file name when creating it, but does not require the correct case to open or manage the file.
case-aware
In an operating system, a feature that allows the OS to preserve the case used for the characters in a file name when creating it, but does not require the correct case when opening or managing the file.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat's commercially available version of Linux
open-source software
Software distributed with all its source code, allowing developers to customize it as necessary
source code
The uncompiled text program statement that can be viewed and edited with a text editor or special program software.
burn
To write a digital data just once to a disc. Traditionally this term refers to the writing of data to a disc (CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R) that can only be written to once in any given area of the disc. Once full, you cannot add data to the disc. It is "write-once" . The source files can be individual files or an ISO file.