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The Official Ubuntu Book: Welcome to the Command Line

Apr 18, 2008

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The command line is one of the most powerful parts of any Ubuntu system, and the tools explained in this chapter will be absolutely critical to success.

This chapter is from the book 

Official Ubuntu Book, The

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One of the most powerful parts of any Ubuntu system is the command line. It can also be one of the most daunting to dive into. There is often little help, and commands are not easy to find. But if you are willing to learn, the power of the command line will speed up your work and can be a great education.

While the command line is a nice addition to a desktop user's life, it is completely invaluable if you run a server. The Ubuntu server installs without any graphical user interface, so the tools explained in this chapter and other books will be absolutely critical to success. And hey, remember to have fun!

Starting Up the Terminal

The terminal can be found under Accessories > Terminal. When it first launches, you will see something similar to that shown in Figure A-1.

Figure A-1 The terminal window.

You will see a blinking cursor immediately preceded by a string ending in a $. The first word in that string is your user name, followed by the @ symbol. After the @ the hostname of your computer is listed followed by the name of the folder you are currently in (currently your home folder), which is represented by a ~ symbol.

There are many dozens of commands. Here are a few, broken down by category.

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