Shells Terminals and Consoles

Shells and Terminals

The linux shell provides a basic text interface for a user with an optical input such as a keyboard to interact with the Operating System and it’s mounted or installed applications. Most linux Operating Systems, than not, are distributed with only the command line interface rather than the Graphical User Interface (Desktops) many users are accustomed to.

Desktop Environments

There are many different Linux Distributions and many different Desktop Environments to pick from for each distribution. Popular Linux Systems are Ubuntu with either Gnome desktop, KDE desktop, or Xfce. There are other various as well but these are the three most popular. Desktops can access the terminal through a terminal application which then sends the commands through the same channels as if it were a terminal only installation.