Like all Linux distributions, Ubuntu 10.10, aka, Maverick Meerkat, the latest version of the popular Linux distribution, ships with a firewall installed. The firewall is actually embedded in the kernel. In Ubuntu, the firewall’s original command line interface has been replaced by ufw, a more user-friendly command line script.

Computer working environments are pretty similar to the species on this planet. One can see ancient species, that have survived millions of years, living along some fairly-recent ones like humans.

I know that I wrote that you don’t need to drop to the command line in order to use Linux. But a knowledge of the command line can be very useful. That’s where a good book on the subject comes in.

Now it’s time to discuss one of the most mysterious and confusing parts of Linux to a Windows user: the command line. To most Windows users the prospect of typing in what you want your computer to do is completely foreign and thus intimidating.

ufw, the Uncomplicated FireWall, is Ubuntu’s user-friendly, command line frontend to IPTables, the command line utility for managing Netfilter, the firewall application built into the Linux kernel. It is installed not just on Ubuntu, but also on all Ubuntu-based distributions. As simple to use as ufw is, a graphical interface is even better, especially for new users.

Try to describe Hotwire, and you'll eventually wind up saying something that sounds like an oxymoron, like "command-line GUI," "graphical shell" or "GUI xterm." Well, that's pretty much what Hotwire is: something halfway between a text-based shell and a modern graphical user interface.

This could be very useful to you if you’re working in the terminal and need to step away for a moment. You can achieve a locked screen, just like when you do it the graphical way, with this command entered at the command line, or cli…

Today’s “Newbie Tip” is learning some basics about the “Command Line Interface” or as it’s mostly referred to, “Command Line”. The command line gives the user the ability to interact with the operating system by typing via a text terminal.

There are several ways you can learn how to use the Linux command line. The way I took was the traditional one. I read the, ahem, fine manual, RTFM as we like to say, and I used the 'man' command a lot. That was well back before O'Reilly started publishing its great Unix and Linux technology books.