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Notes Class 05

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Sierra Maldonado edited this page Jan 25, 2023 · 2 revisions

The Linux command line for beginners

Explain the terms “shell”, “terminal”, “cli”, and “command prompt”. Why are these still used today, when we have graphical interfaces?

  • Terminals were designed to run as a multi-user system on mainframe computers. Terminal is just a mechanism to transfer information
  • Shell in Linux is a program that interprets the commands you enter in a terminal window, so the operating system can understand what you want to do
  • Cli means command-line interface, is a text-based user interface (UI) used to run programs, manage computer files and interact with the computer
  • Command prompt is an input field in the terminal emulator (CLI) which lets you input/issue commands

What are the commands to change directories, list the file’s contents and rename/move files?

  • Each of these tasks required its own program or command: one to change directories (cd), another to list their contents (ls), a third to rename or move files (mv), and so on.

What are relative and absolute paths? What is special about starting with a ~ (tilde) or a ‘/’ character in the path?

  • Using the tilde character (”~”) at the start of your path similarly means “starting from my home directory”
  • although the “/” directory is sometimes referred to as the root directory

Explain what Linux is, using anything except English.

Well, Linux is like one of them fancy waterin holes. Anyone can use em if they know what your doin. The difference between Linux and that there normal internet is the access. Linux got the goods you can't see on windows yeehaw, roll tide.

Things I want to know more about

Maybe this will make more sense doing it, it's kind of difficult reading it and understanding without looking at myself do it.

Other Notes

  • If you can’t find a launcher, or if you just want a faster way to bring up the terminal, most Linux systems use the same default keyboard shortcut to start it: Ctrl-Alt-T
  • Now to the command itself. pwd is an abbreviation of ‘print working directory’.
  • Be extra careful with case when typing in the command line. Typing PWD instead of pwd will produce an error
  • whoami command will remind you of your username
  • mkdir is short for ‘make directory’
  • The “-p” that we used is called an option or a switch
  • A question mark (”?”) can be used to indicate “any single character” within the file name.
  • An asterisk (”*”) can be used to indicate “zero or more characters”
  • rmdir (remove directory)

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