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In this tutorial we'll concentrate in the first part of the quoted text. Here we offer a little series of practices that will improve your understanding of the system and your performance using it.

Improve your typing, or teach the system to understand you

Most people involved with computer spend a lot of time writing text, rather than using the mouse to point and click. Whether you are using a text editor, composing an email or exploring your filesystem, you can save a lot of time if your typing skills are good. Less errors mean less time lost. It's never a bad idea to take typing classes.

But if you're too busy or lazy, use the following steps:

1. Log your commands

This is automatically done in most cases, but if for some reason your Unix system has command history disabled, enable it. For a most detailed input, use script.

2. Review it daily

Every day, open the history file (different filenames are used for different shells) and gather statistics for:

• Your typing mistakes.
• The commands you use the most.
• The parameters you use the most, for each command.

Now, what to do with that?. Have a look:

For typing:

• Create a $HOME/bin directory
  (example:'mkdir /export/home/user0121/bin')
  
• Create a symlink there with the error you have. Example, if you type 'sl' instead of 'ls' often enough, just write:
  'ln -s /export/home/user/0121/bin/sl /usr/bin/ls'.
• Another option is to create an alias: 'alias sl="ls"' (include it in your .profile to have it always available).
  
• Include $HOME/bin in your PATH:
  (PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin; export PATH. Again, include it in your .profile)
• Now you'll get correct answers even if you type the wrong command.

• Create aliases and use them.
  Example, 'll' instead of 'ls -l', 'alog' instead of 'tail -f /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log'...

• Print out the man pages of the, say, 10 commands you use the most, and read them.
• Explore flags you can use and you didn't know about, put them in practice, see if other commands/tools are better for you, and study them.