Chapter 9. Customizing the Shell
| IN THIS CHAPTER
Regardless of whether or not you choose to operate your FreeBSD system through the X11 GUIparticularly as an administratoryou're going to have to deal with a shell. A shell gives you all the flexibility you need to accomplish even the most complex tasks but also dictates a user experience that's arcane at best. In this chapter, we'll make ourselves at home in the shellcomfortable enough to use it as a programming environment as well as an everyday user interface. We've already talked about the basics of the shell and what you can do with it back in Chapter 8, "Working with the Shell." That chapter introduced the shell as a command-line interface, discussed the various shells you can use in FreeBSD and what kinds of commands are available in the shell for controlling the system. Now, we'll be looking at the shell itself in more detail and examining how it applies to the multitudes of users you might be supporting on your system and how to customize it to your taste. |
