I’ll start this post by quoting myself while talking about my mac last week, I said “Windows free since 2003″. Although technically that is when I received my first Mac. I had been running Linux as my primary OS for a year and a half before that. I made the choice to abandon the familiar windows environment for a platform that allowed me to make decisions for myself about how and what programs I use. I quickly learned to enjoy these freedoms and knew I would never go back to the restrictions imposed by the Microsoft programs. I was willing to give up “pretty programs” and even in some cases better functionality to have a level of freedom not offered on that platform. With the advent of OSX Apple chose to use a unix base for their platform. This always intrigued me but it was not enough to pull me away from linux. When OSX Panther was release and included Expose I finally found something offered in OSX that I couldn’t have in any of my linux flavors. Although I was accepting another OS overload and I could not compile my kernel any more, I found that the reasons for doing that were not needed. OSX offered the unix under pinnings with a wonderful GUI, and I immediately fell in love.

When I talk to people about my mac and I show them my computer there are 2 things they always notice. The first is my use of virtual desktops and the neat effects I display when switching. The second thing they notice is that I always have a terminal window open and that when copying and opening files I use that instead of the finder. I love the terminal and I use it extensively to get things done.

People often think this is neat but dont know where to get started in learning more about terminal. I also usually dont know where to direct them. However yesterday I found myself on the BASH website. BASH is the shell that provides the command line interface for the mac terminal. And on their website that list a set of neat tips for dealing with the CLI. If you have wanted to learn more about the terminal and werent sure how to get started I recommend you start with the BASH tutorial pages.