No mean feat. Welcome aboard! Find a command by description: apropos $apropos permission Will list all commands with permission in the description Read a manual page: man $man chmod Will display the manual for chmod command. Use apropos to find the name of the thing, use man to read about the thing. Don't type the $, that is your command prompt you should see. If you see \# you are logged in as root, don't do everything as root, only when you need it.