Cygwin and UNIX Tutorial for Beginners

This is a short tutorial on how to use the Cygwin command prompt. Cygwin is a software package that allows Windows computers to run some UNIX software. UNIX is actually a trademark but is often used to describe a class of operating systems that is often found on larger systems such as server machines. Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD and FreeBSD are examples of UNIX operating systems. Cygwin is available on the databar machines and can also be downloaded from www.cygwin.com. Apple MacOS and other operating systems, e.g. Atari Mint, also allows UNIX software to be compiled and run. Parts of this tutorial also applies to those operating systems.

Cygwin can be installed on the databar machines using the installation system. Double click on the "Installation of programs" icon. Select "Emulation" and then "Cygwin" in the appearing subcategory to start the installation. The computer will have to be restarted after the installation for the changes to take effect.

Once Cygwin is installed, you can access a Cygwin command prompt via the Windows menu.

Typographical Conventions

Introduction to UNIX

Tutorial One

• Listing files and directories
• Making Directories
• Changing to a different Directory
• The directories . and ..
• Pathnames
• More about home directories and pathnames

Tutorial Two

• Copying Files
• Moving Files
• Removing Files and directories
• Displaying the contents of a file on the screen
• Searching the contents of a file

Tutorial Three

• Redirection
• Redirecting the Output
• Redirecting the Input
• Pipes

Tutorial Four

• Wildcards
• Filename Conventions
• Getting Help

Tutorial Five

• File system security (access rights)
• Changing access rights
• Processes and Jobs
• Listing suspended and background processes
• Killing a process

Tutorial Six

• Other Useful UNIX commands

UNIX Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

• These seven articles contain the answers to some Frequently Asked Questions often seen in comp.unix.questions and comp.unix.shell.

History of UNIX

• UNIX was originally developed at Bell Laboratories as a private research project by a small group of people. Read all about the history of its creation.

Originally created by M.Stonebank@surrey.ac.uk edited to be used with Cygwin, 19 October 2001

This tutorial is licensed under a Creative Commons License.