This “howto” is intended for people who may be new to Ubuntu (or Linux in general), or who spend most of their time using the graphical user interface (aka GNOME), but are occasionally confronted by other howtos that assume knowledge of “the terminal”. My hope is to provide a helpful reference (or cheatsheet) for the most common commands you’ll need to navigate using the command line interface.

How to open the terminal

In the top left, go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal:

A window should open that looks like this:

What is a command prompt?

The text displayed in the terminal window before the dollar-sign is called the “command prompt”. In my case it is jwatt@x200:~$ where jwatt is my username, x200 is the name of my computer, and ~ (tilde) is short for my home directory (which happens to be /home/jwatt).

All the commands you type will appear after the dollar sign, and some commands, like those that change directories, actually change the appearance of the command prompt (to help you remember where you are). In the examples below, I’ve copied all the commands I’ve typed, along with their results and the command prompt, for added realism.

After you type a command, hit the Enter key to execute it. If the command outputs any results, they will be printed out, followed by a new command prompt.

Figure out where you are

pwd – present working directory

jwatt@x200:~$ pwd
/home/jwatt
jwatt@x200:~$

List out the files and directories where you are

ls – list

jwatt@x200:~$ ls
Desktop  test
jwatt@x200:~$

Change directories

cd – change directory

Use cd x to bring you into the “x” directory:

jwatt@x200:~$ cd test
jwatt@x200:~/test$ pwd
/home/jwatt/test
jwatt@x200:~/test$

Use cd .. to bring up a directory:

jwatt@x200:~/test$ cd ..
jwatt@x200:~$ pwd
/home/jwatt
jwatt@x200:~$

Use cd alone to bring you back to your home directory:

jwatt@x200:~$ cd test
jwatt@x200:~/test$ cd
jwatt@x200:~$ pwd
/home/jwatt
jwatt@x200:~$

Create a file

touch – touch a file to make it exist

jwatt@x200:~$ cd test
jwatt@x200:~/test$ touch notes.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test$ ls
notes.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test$

Create a directory

mkdir – make directory

jwatt@x200:~/test$ mkdir notes
jwatt@x200:~/test$ ls
notes  notes.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test$

Move or rename a file

mv – move

To move a file, provide the file plus the destination directory:

jwatt@x200:~/test$ mv notes.txt notes
jwatt@x200:~/test$ ls
notes
jwatt@x200:~/test$ cd notes
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ ls
notes.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$

To rename a file, provide the file plus a new filename:

jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ mv notes.txt notes2.txt 
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ ls
notes2.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$

Copy a file

cp – copy

jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ cp notes2.txt notes3.txt 
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ ls
notes2.txt  notes3.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$

Remove a file

rm – remove

Be careful, there is no undo!

jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ rm notes3.txt 
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ ls
notes2.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$

Remove a directory

rmdir – remove directory

Note: the directory must be free of all files before it can be deleted.

jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ ls
notes2.txt
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ rm notes2.txt 
jwatt@x200:~/test/notes$ cd ..
jwatt@x200:~/test$ rmdir notes/
jwatt@x200:~/test$ ls
jwatt@x200:~/test$

Run a command with elevated privileges

sudo – superuser do

Typically this is required when installing software (see below). sudo will prompt you for your password before executing the command that follows, making sure the change is being made by a user with the appropriate privileges, as well as giving you a moment to make sure you really want to run the command.

Install something on Ubuntu

apt-get install – apt package installer

Most other online howtos usually take the form of a long line of apt-get install commands, as this is the quickest way to instruct someone to install several software packages at once. If the site instructing you to install software is a trusted source, you can simply copy the apt-get install command, paste it into the terminal, and hit enter to run.

Because installing software on your computer requires elevated privileges, you’ll need to preface the apt-get install command with sudo.

jwatt@x200:~$ sudo apt-get install sl
[sudo] password for jwatt: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  sl
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/25.3kB of archives.
After this operation, 197kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package sl.
(Reading database ... 145527 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking sl (from .../archives/sl_3.03-15_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up sl (3.03-15) ...

jwatt@x200:~$