How to navigate Linux (Basics)

run commands in a terminal

To run commands in a console or terminal, you would start with the command abbreviation, followed by possible given options or parameters. For example, to run the command ls in a terminal, you would type ls and press enter. The command ls lists all files and directories in the current directory.

[command] [-options] [parameters]

navigate the command line

Or, to navigate to a specific directory you would type cd followed by the directory name, for example cd Documents. To run the command cd without any parameters, you would type cd and press enter. This would navigate you to your home directory.

cd folder/
cd folder/subfolder/file.txt

log into text mode consoles

to log into linux text mode remote consoles you would type ssh followed by the username and the ip address of the remote machine. For example, to log into a remote machine with the ip address 192.168.0.1 and the username root, you would type ssh root@192.168.0.1 and press enter.

ssh user@domain

zipping files and directories

To zip files and directories you would use the command zip. For example, to zip the directory hello and all its contents, you would type zip -r hello.zip hello and press enter. To unzip the file hello.zip, you would type unzip hello.zip and press enter.

zip -r hello.zip hello
unzip hello.zip

create, delete, copy, and move files and directories

To create a file, you would use the command touch. For example, to create a file named hello.txt, you would type touch hello.txt and press enter. To delete a file, you would use the command rm. To copy a file, the command cp, and to move a file, you would use the command mv. Which also works for directories and can me used to rename files and directories.

touch hello.txt
cp hello.txt hello2.txt
mv hello2.txt hello3.txt
rm hello3.txt

search and compare text files

You can search files via find and grep. For example, to search for the string hello in all files in the current directory, you would type grep -r "hello" . and press enter. To search for the string hello in all files in the current directory and all subdirectories, you would type grep -r "hello" * and press enter. To search for the file hello.txt in the current directory, you would type find . -name "hello.txt" and press enter.

find . -name *.txt
grep -r "hello" .

and also compare them with diff. For example, to compare the files hello.txt and world.txt, you would type diff hello.txt world.txt and press enter.

diff file1.txt file2.txt

read, and use system documentation (man)

To read the manual for a linux command you would type man followed by the command abbreviation. For example, to read the manual for the command ls, you would type man ls and press enter.

man diff