If your local computer runs Linux, then just follow your normal power-up and login procedure. Once you have logged in, you will probably see something roughly like this:

or this:

but there is a wide range of different appearances offered by different Linux distributions. You are, in fact, now in a local graphics-mode session.

To get from here into a local text-mode session, you need to find and launch a "terminal" or "xterm" program. Different Linux distributions will hide this is different places in the menu system, so you will need to hunt for it.

If your local computer runs Mac OS, then just follow your normal power-up and login procedure. Once you have logged in, you will probably see something roughly like this:

You are, in fact, now in a local graphics-mode UNIX session. (Mac OS is a Unix operating system.)

To get from here into a local text-mode session, look in the Applications launcher for the "Terminal" program.

If your local computer runs Microsoft Windows, then you are booting up into a local graphics-mode WIndows session. You can get a local text-mode Windows session by running the cmd program. Some of the commands and technqiues that we will study for Unix text-mode sessions can be applied, with minor changes, to a Windows text-mode session.

Of course, those are Windows sessions, not Unix sessions. Windows users will probably concentrate on doing Unix via remote sessions to Unix machines elsewhere o nthe network.

It is possible to do local *nix sessions on a Windows PC. For more than a decade, the CygWin project has been providing an extensive collection of (free) Unix-based tools that provide a POSIX^[4] layer that allow open-source Unix software to be compiled and run on Windows PCs. Personally, I just can't stand trying to do "serious" work on a Windows machine that does not have CygWin installed.