I have installed the version v0.8.1.
I run bitshares_client and I get this.
Not starting RPC server, use -server to enable the RPC interface
<wallet closed> >>>
Great, you are halfway there. Type after '>>>'
get_info
You will see the state of your client.
Type in the commands mentioned in the previous posts.
You can learn new commands with 'help', for example:
help wallet_open
You can see all available with
help