Hello all. First off I'm newly changed over to Mac. I have a question, what is Terminal? I have some downloads that instructs me to enter some code lines in terminal, is it safe to do so, or am I risking my computer's performance by fiddling around in Terminal?
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Terminal question
- Thread starter hoodgyno
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What are you trying to accomplish and what are the commands? You could be doing something benign or something very dangerous. We can't tell unless we know what you are doing.
If you don't know what you're doing, absolutely! Messing around with Terminal is a good way to turn your computer into a paperweight.
I don't know if I'd go that far. There isn't much you could do with Terminal, if anything, that couldn't be fixed by reinstalling the OS. If there is something I'm missing, please correct me.
You're mostly correct. However, there are several command-line utilities that could really ruin your day if you don't know what you're doing. hdparm being one.
The terminal command line uses Unix commands, which give you lots of power, but also gives you plenty of power to create a terrible mess. There are plenty of threads from people who used command lines to do what they thought was something quite simple and wound up with a system that would not boot.
I'm saying that if you don't know what you're doing, you could render you computer a paperweight. I didn't say it would be permanent or that you couldn't recover by reinstalling the OS.