Howtogeek posted a beginner's guide to shell scripting

Being a Linux user means you play around with the command-line. Like it or not, there are just some things that are done much more easily via this interface than by pointing and clicking. The more you use and learn the command-line, the more you see its potential. Well, the command-line itself is a program: the shell. Most Linux distros today use Bash, and this is what you’re really entering commands into.

Now, some of you who used Windows before using Linux may remember batch files. These were little text files that you could fill with commands to execute and Windows would run them in turn. It was a clever and neat way to get some things done, like run games in your high school computer lab when you couldn’t open system folders or create shortcuts. Batch files in Windows, while useful, are a cheap imitation of shell scripts.

  The Beginner's Guide to Shell Scripting: The Basics