If you are like most new people, then you are scared of the terminal. this is ok, its normal. the reason we have the terminal is because it is much easier to help someone by telling them to copy and paste some text into the terminal than it is to say "ok first you click system, then preferences, then you click the one towards the top of the list that says blahblahblah".

common terminal commands and what they mean, and underneath a short description

this is a potetially dangerous command, as you have probably seen in many forum members signatures, and if you read the announcement. if you haven't read the announcement I highly suggest you read it, it can be found via the link below
Announcement
also, please note that this command will delete things WITHOUT confirmation, therefore a small typo could end up deleting vital files, especially if you are root when you run the command

while this command is essentially useful, when used with potentially malicious commands it can be very dangerous. sudo allows commands to be executed as root, root in linux is basically what an administrator in windows is, however root can do ANYTHING, thus making sudo a command that must be used only if you can trust the person who told you the code, or you have used the same or a similar code before. in most cases where you dont understand a command you should wait for another user to post the same thing verifying that the command is indeed safe.

This command is basically the same as sudo, but rather than being meant for text it is meant for graphical user interfaces, or GUI's

this command is used to make files you download from the internet executable, such as .run or .bin files

a standard aptitude/apt-get command would be
sudo aptitude install PROGRAM NAME
in order for an aptitude code to work you must have sudo at the front, because programs are installed in a directory (location) that only root can write in. aptitude/apt-get is used for mainly for installing and uninstalling programs.

this one is pretty straightforward, the terminal executes commands from /home/USER when opened but can execute from other places using the cd command.
[code]cd ~/Desktop[/code] would change the terminal working directory to the user desktop with ~ being /home/USER
this command is commonly used for installing programs from the source code

this command can be used to copy files or directories from one place on your computer to another. it will leave the original file or directory where it is and also make a new one somewhere else that is exactly the same
cp /home/USER/documents/file1.odt /home/USER/documents/something/file1.odt
that would copy the file file1.odt from documents to documents/something

same as cp (above) but doesn't leave the file where it was originally

this command will search for a file name in directories, sub directories etc of the parent directory you give it
find file /
would find anything named file in the parent directory / (entire computer)

easy command to remember, tells you in an easy to understand way about your hard drives and storage

tells you the directories of /home/user except those that are hidden by starting with a "." or ending with "~"

shows you your directories in /home/user including hidden folders

typing a program name in the terminal, such as firefox, will simply run the program from the terminal, if you close the terminal, you will also close the program.

this command will stop the program it is addressing, for example the code:
killall firefox-bin
would kill all open firefox windows, including the downloads window, the addons window, and the web browser itself

this part of my guide will explain some commonly use acronyms and short forms (abbreviations) of words.

a tarball archive is like a zip archive, same files just a less memory consuming version

it can be found at applications>accessories>terminal
it is the text based version of most other things, from it you can install programs, run programs, uninstall programs, among many, many other thing

by default this is metacity. basically this controls the top of the window, or the window bar, where the close maximize and minimize buttons are. it also controls the scrollbar, sometimes it will control text entry boxes, and text but sometimes it won't.

compiz is a window manager. if you have heard of the cube, this is how it is done. in order to use compiz you are suppose to have a good graphics card like nvidia or ATI but I can run it pretty well with onboard graphics. i have pretty good onboard graphics though. some good videos of compiz in use can be found on youtube.

window decorator. Makes the windows look pretty .

gfx simply is a shorter way to say graphics. im sure you already knew that, but im also sure there are a few people that didn't know.

root, or superuser is basically an administrator, they can do anything on the computer.

if you want anything added post so below, or alternatively you can email me.