Text editors, hands-on assignments, commands, oh my!

Using the text editors, vim and nano, in the VMware workstation was relatively problem free since the instructions I followed fell right into place. But, there always seems to be one or two instructions that have either changed or are not working correctly. I suppose this is only to be expected. For instance, once I logged into the server, I typed the first line command, sudo aptitude install vim-runtime, and according to instructions, you wait a little while and then type the next one. Well, no, that's not true. I was asked for a password after I typed that line, after waiting a little while. So, I enter my password and waah-laa! I get the $ prompt and then enter the next command, sudo aptitude install vim-full, and succeed with the installation of vimtutor. I'm not sure why it is but when working with computers and software, I always feel like I'm on a roller-coaster. I get this exhilarating feeling because everything is going my way and then suddenly, I hit a brick wall and everything is downhill at that point. The other problem I had was when I tried to shutdown. Instructions say, use sudo shutdown now to shutdown Ubuntu first. Well, no, that's not true. After Bruce rapped my knuckles to get me to read my colleagues' comments, I found out that the actual command I had to use was sudo shutdown -P now. That'll teach me.

It took me a little while to get the hang of using the Ctrl and Alt keys to activate the mouse cursor since you have to click in the tutor window to type text or move arrows, etc. Then the Esc key has to be used to get to the normal mode. I thought this was a lot of fun, trying to remember what keys to hit when and where. It sort of reminded me of playing those games on the old Activision game console where you used the arrow keys, etc, to play ping pong on a black and white screen.

Configuring files with nano went well also. I think I ought to go back and try it with vi just to practice too, but we'll see. I also had no problem entering the two new lines using "alias," removing the hash marks in the address lines, or running the aptitude updates. I did get some strange messages having to do with archives and unpacking them but I ignored them. I also got a couple of messages that sound really scary. Like this one: "As a result, these host keys are from a well-known set, are subject to brute force attacks, and must be regenerated." And I thought this one was hilarious: "A security certificate which was automatically created for your local system needs to be replaced due to a flaw which renders it insecure. If you don't know anything about this, you can safely ignore this message." I just know I'm going to get into trouble one of these days.

And lots of commands were used this week: cd (change directory), pwd (to display the name of the current directory), ls (list files), ls -a (list everything including files), cp (copy), ctrl -o (write file to disk). I still don't think I can remember most of them without a cheat sheet next to me, but I think it's slowly sinking in as long as I keep going over and over them.