Natural language and graphic interface techniques go some way towards facilitating competent, reliable use of the Unix operating system. Such methods, however, remain insufficient particularly where newcomers to the use of Unix are concerned. This paper presents a novel, multimodal approach to interaction with the Unix operating system. The main aim of this type of interface is to provide for an optimum combination of various communication modalities (voice, keyboard, graphics) within an integrated architecture, so as to promote a more natural man-machine dialog. Here, the role of each mode is defined together with their complementarity within a multimodal architecture. The multimodal event analyser is then presented, together with preferred options in respect of the communication modalities exercised for system response.