
To see hidden directories and files use -a option with the ~]$ ls -a /home/swapnil/Downloads/Test/ Size does matter Ls ~]$ ls /home/swapnil/Downloads/Test/ There is no place to hide You can use the ls command in following manner: You don’t have to change directory to see its content. and so on.īut if you want to get out of the current directory and go back to home, simply type cd. If you want to move one step back in the directory then use cd. If you want to change to another directory just follow the same pattern: cd PATH_OF_DIRECTORY . Just type cd and the directory name, in this case it’s ‘Test’, without any slash. Let’s say we want to move inside the ‘Test’ directory within the current ‘Downloads’ directory. You don’t have to give the complete path if you want to move inside the sub-directory of the current directory. I can see all subdirectories and files inside Downloads directory by running the ls command. You need to type your username:Īs you can see in the third line, ‘Downloads’ directory has moved inside the square brackets, which denotes that currently we are inside this directory. So if I want to change directory to ‘Downloads’ which is inside my home folder, we run cd and then give the path. You can also use the ‘Tab’ key which will auto completes the path. To change to any directory, use the cd command. You can list all directories and files inside the current directory by using the ~]$ lsĭesktop Documents Downloads Music Pictures Public Templates Videos Moving around Unless you are performing administrative tasks or working inside root directories never work as root as it will change the permissions of all directories and files you worked on, making root the user of those directories and their content. $ means you are logged in as a regular user, whereas # means you are logged in as root. You will see the name of the logged in user followed by the hostname. When you open a terminal emulator, by default you are in the home directory of the logged in user. Different distros come with their own terminal emulators: KDE comes with Konsole and Gnome comes with Gnome Terminal. If you are using a desktop environment then you need a terminal emulator to emulate the terminal within that interface.
Double commander for linux pictures install#
Another more modern shell with more features is ‘zsh’ which you can install for your distribution (we will talk about shells in a later article). There are many Shells available for Linux, but the most popular is Bash (Bourne-Again shell) which was written by the GNU Project. As such there is a set structure of commands different OSes may use a different structure to perform the same task. Shell is basically a program that turns the ‘text’ that you type into commands/orders for your computer to perform. So without further ado let’s learn some basics of command line. It’s more or less like SMSing to your PC, telling it what to do. People tend to think command line is difficult it’s not. So if you are on a slower system, you are better off with the command line than GUI. It also saves system resources which are consumed by GUIs. A Gnome user doesn’t have to sacrifice such a useful function, thanks to the command line.īut that’s not all command line does. As a result the user of x distro or DE hesitates in trying out other projects fearing they won’t find the same tools. One simple example is that Gnome’s Nautilus doesn’t allow batch rename of files where as KDE’s Dolphin does. When I was dependent on a GUI, I used to get worried whether that particular distro has that feature or not – it was all about certain features being exposed or hidden through the GUI.

Then it desn’t matter whether you are on Ubuntu or Lubuntu. Furthermore if we move between Fedora, openSUSE and Arch, it becomes even more complicated.īut once you understand that in Debian-based systems apt-get or dpkg are the commands that you need to manage software, life becomes easy. A user has to un-learn and then re-learn the process of doing the same thing while they hop between distros. Different desktop environments on the same distro need different ways to perform the same task. Just look at the derivates of Ubuntu, even if they use the same code-base they have different tools to do the same job. But as I matured as a user I found CLI (command line interface) was more efficient than fiddling with the buttons of a tool.ĬLI also allows users to be independent of distros. I agree that the graphical user interface (GUI) makes it easier for a user to interact with their system and that’s what new users may need to get started with Linux that’s what I needed when I was starting off with Linux back in 2005. Why is it a strength? There is no one answer there are many answers. One shell to rule them all, one shell to find them, one shell to bring them all and in the same distro bind them.Ĭommand line is one of the many strengths of Linux based systems.
