Hi Richard and Jeremy

Here is some background information on what the others are trying to tell.

The current discussion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_Shell or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPanel, is a manifestation of the age old discussion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface (CLI) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_user_interface (GUI). There is no one answer for all. This article http://www.markus-gattol.name/ws/cli_vs_gui.html is a good comparison.

Limiting outselves to installing Moodle on a remote Linux VPS, the CLI version could look like http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/CentOS_Linux_installation as already pointed out. (Careful: Though the URL says /24/ the content is on "Installing Moodle 2.0 on stock version of CentOS 5.5" written in February 2011.) For Debian-based distributions I maintain my own notes: "Installing Moodle on a Debian-based LAMP server" http://www.syndrega.ch/?p=38. (Depending on where you start, you might need "Setting up LAMP on a Debian-based server" http://www.syndrega.ch/?p=33 too.)

I only had a quick look at CPanel a long time ago. I believe these posts representative of how you work on CPanel:
- "Trying to install moodle 2.4 on cpanel" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=227108
- "Notes on upgrading Moodle from 1.9.x to 2.4.1 on a shared server" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=224561

The choice is yours!