For those of you who are not familiar with Linux or other variants of UNIX, you need to learn how to use UNIX for basic tasks such as making directories, moving/copying files, redirection, etc. and for editing text files. You're basically on your own for this, but we did some quick Google searches and here are some pointers:
Here is a [UNIX tutorial] we found in Google which looks reasonable. Type “UNIX tutorial” or some other relevant string into Google for pointers to more material.
To edit text files, the two most popular tools in UNIX are emacs and vi. The editor vi has weird key mappings, but is simple and compact. The editor emacs is extremely powerful and also has some weird key mappings, but these can be largely avoided by running emacs under X windows, in which case emacs acts pretty much like a generic text editor.
Here is an [emacs tutorial] and a [vi tutorial]; use Google to find out more. You can also try the built-in emacs tutorial by typing emacs and hitting the keystrokes “Ctrl-h” and then “t”. For the uninitiated, if you are running X windows, our recommendation is emacs; otherwise, choose one randomly and switch if you don't like it. If you don't know if you are running X windows, ask the person sitting next to you.