Command Line Intro
. Mostafa Lotfy
What Is The Command Line
We all use a GUI, a graphical user interface, to interact with our computers. We click on buttons and drag & drop to pass our commands.
The command line is a way to interact with the computer through text only, by typing commands directly into what is known as the terminal.
The command line is also generally known as the terminal, bash, or shell. For simplicity, we can think of all of them as one–the application where we pass our text commands to the computer.
Why Use It?
It’s been said that “graphical user interfaces make easy tasks easy, while command-line interfaces make difficult tasks possible” and this is still very true today.
The Linux Command Line, by William Shotts.
To do things we otherwise cannot.
Some applications do not have a user interface. The easiest way to use them is through the command line. To install and interact with these apps, we will need to type a few commands into the terminal. Being intimidated by the command line would prevent us from using these apps and limit our options. Installing and using Jekyll and git to build, test, and deploy our blog is why we need to get familiar with using the command line.
Efficiency & productivity
Once we get used to it, many things become much faster. If we notice the things that we repeat on our computer and figure out how to do them with the terminal, we will become more efficient.
Not as complicated as it first seems.
We will use a few commands and keep repeating them over and over. We don’t need to know every command out there. We begin with a few essential ones. Over time stumble on more and develop a set that we repeatedly use.
Our aim is not to replace the graphical user interface but to do new things and possibly be more efficient with some of the things we repeatedly do.
How To Use It
Command-line tutorial
Command-line cheat sheet
After you take the tutorial, the command line cheat sheet is a useful page you can bookmark and get back to when your memory abandons you.
Promising Resources To Check Out Later
- Command Line Crash Course.
- The Linux Command Line, by William Shotts.
- Beginner’s Guide to the Bash Terminal
- A Beginner’s Introduction to BASH Shell Scripting
- Mozilla’s Command line crash course
- Linux Terminal and Console Explained For Dummies
- How to create bash aliases.
- ZSH, A Better Shell.
- TLDR pages, simplified man pages.
- Codecademy’s command line cheat sheet.
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