From LQWiki

Sometimes in your Linux life, it is important to open a console in order to send commands to the computer. These commands will be interpreted by a shell. When you open a console, you will be presented with a shell prompt typically giving your computer's hostname (in this case it is tweedleburg) like this:

tweedleburg:~ #

This means you can start typing commands.

There are several ways to open a console. Depending on your Desktop environment, installed software and distribution, one or more of the following procedures might work for you:

• press ALT_F2, type "xterm", then ENTER. This works for most distributions.
• press ALT_F2, type "konsole", then ENTER. konsole is very user-friendly. This will work if KDE is installed.

Note

You will often find console examples here like

# command1

or

$ command2

In these command examples do not type '$' or '#' because $ signifies that the command is run as a normal user and # means the command is being run as the root user.

See also

• Linuxintro
• Command line interface