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Hey Adelie, what are you doing?
(muffled squawk)
(squawking)
That's not quite what they mean by entering text into a shell prompt
(squawk)
That's true, if you want to access the kernel, you need to use a shell. But you do so through a terminal window, like this:
This gives you a command line interface. It's here that you enter text at the prompt.
In this case, our prompt is a dollar sign.
(squawking)
I'm glad you asked. In a nutshell...
no pun intended...
the shell is how you tell your computer what to do.
(squawking)
That's right, by entering text commands.
(squawking)
And you can also run multiple commands in a file together. This is called a shell script.
(squawking)
No, it's not that kind of kernel, but we'll make some popcorn anyway.
(squawking)
I'm hungry too, but let me finish telling you about the shell.
Since we're on the subject of food, lets say your computer is a candy coated piece of milk chocolate.
Your kernel is the milk chocolate inside and your shell is the hard candy outside.
You can’t communicate directly with the chocolate because it will melt in your hand.
(squawking)
Or flipper.
So you use the hard candy shell to interface with your kernel.
(squawking)
No. I would never eat a computer. It’s a simile.
(squawking)
No, not like an emoticon. A simile is a figure of speech used to compare very different things.
(squawking)
Yes, like a robot talking to a penguin.
(squawking)
I like talking to you, too.