Just calm down, there is nothing to fear. KDE does not want to take your beloved (and sometimes very effective) command line away from you. You can move your files with the desktop, but you can also use the UNIX® commands you are accustomed to. In fact,KDE puts command line power at your fingertips, in perhaps some surprising places.

KDE provides a very sophisticated command line window called Konsole. Choose K menu->System->Konsole to start it. This may be something you want on your panel: luckily it's already there in the default configuration!

Sometimes, you only want to enter one command on the command line. In these cases, you do not need a full-blown terminal. Just hit Alt-F2 and you get a small command line where you can enter one command. The command line window will disappear afterwards, but it remembers your command.

When you pop up this window (which we call minicli by the way) and hit the Up arrow, you can browse through all the commands you have previously entered. Also, you can enter URLs in minicli to open a Konqueror window with the specified URL.

Konqueror and the editor Kate can both display terminal windows, which behave just like Konsole. In Konqueror, you can turn this on with the menu choice Window->Show Terminal Emulator. The embedded terminal will display at the bottom of your Konqueror window, and the really clever thing is that it will follow your clicks in the file manager view, changing folder as you do. In Kate you can display a terminal with the menu choice Settings->Show Console.

Finally, there's a way to have your command line always available, no matter what you're doing - add one to your Kicker panel!

Simply right mouse button click on an empty space in the panel, and choose Panel->Add->Applet->Application Launcher. This will embed a mini-cli directly into your panel, complete with command history.

So, in conclusion, the command line is never far from view when you're using KDE.