\chapter{Introduction}

What follows here is a compendium of Linux commands and various options that I have found useful. That is all. This started out as notes to myself and I decided to make it a zine, based on the good feedback I got from my hand-written zine \textit{Do it in the Terminal}. I have intended to make a sequel to that one for some time, but because the amount of information I can contain in a zine of that size is limited, I decided to go with one typeset in \LaTeX{} instead.

\paragraph{Organization} This zine is organized by the \textit{output}. For example, if you want to get images out of a pdf file, you would look in the ``Images'' chapter. If you want to get text out of a pdf, you would look in the ``Text'' chapter. If you want to \textit{convert} something to a pdf, or you want to combine pdf files into one (or separate one into many), then you would look in the ``PDF'' chapter. 

\paragraph{Installation} Many, but not all, of these packages are included by default in many (but again, not all) Linux distros. If they are not included in your distro, you will need to install them. I have not included installation information for two main reasons. First, it would simply take up too much space, especially for something that generally can be easily found at the other end of a web search. Second, these methods may change over time, rendering the information contained here obsolete. 

\paragraph{``Why didn't you include information about command \textit{X}?''} Probably because I have never used it and am thus not familiar with it, or don't use it often enough to warrant its inclusion here. But I may possibly include it in a future issue. 

\paragraph{``How can I send you corrections or suggestions for future issues?''} My contact information is listed in the ``Impressum'' on page ii. 

\paragraph{Filenames} To keep things simple, the input file will always be ``input'' in the example code, and likewise, the output file name will always be ``output''. If a file extension is not required, it will not be included. For example ``input.pdf'' means the input \textit{must} be a pdf file, whereas ``input'' means it can be any type of file the application can handle.