Understanding Terminal

Most convenient way to access the command-line is to use a terminal program(Application->Accessories->Terminal)

When the terminal program appears, you’ll see something like this:

your_name@your_name‐desktop:~$

The first part of the prompt shows your username. After the @ sign is the name of the computer, commonly referred to as the hostname.

After this your current browsing location is displayed followed by a colon. By default you will start from ~ . Where '~' is a shorthand form of your home directory.

i.e: /home/your_name

The $ sign indicates the string or sentence ends here.

There are many commands to work in terminal mode. They also work very logically. Once you learn the basics you'll find it easier to do many tasks in command mode rather than graphical mode.

Some commands work on their own. They dont require any arguments. While the others take arguments to know what to work with. In other words, they need to be told what file(s) or folder(s) to work with.

Once a command is entered, all that’s usually seen is the prompt again.
There’s no confirmation. bash doesn’t say “OK” or “Command
completed!”. bash is the silent type. It’ll only speak if it has to, usually to
tell you of an error.

We will discuss all the basic commands in another topic.