Path

Just as in MS-DOS, your path will be the directories that the OS will search for commands. Commonly, your path will include: /sbin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/games /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/X11R6/bin /home/[your username here]/bin

WARNING Don't ever, ever, ever, for any reason, put . in your path. Placing whatever your current directory is in your path may be convenient, but it's a delightfully easy way to run the wrong file -- many unix exploits rely on getting a user (or root) to run a trojaned file with the same name as a commonly run file.

NOTE Unlike in MS-DOS or Windows, the contents of your path are read once when you open your shell, not dynamically read every time you try to run a program without specifying the full path to it. So if you add a new program to one of the directories in your path, you'll have to reinitialize your shell before you can run it without having to type its full path in.