- Starting Up the Terminal
- Getting Started
- Building Pipelines
- Running Commands as Superuser
- Finding Help
- Moving around the Filesystem
- Manipulating Files and Folders
- System Information Commands
- Searching and Editing Text Files
- Dealing with Users and Groups
- Getting Help on the Command Line
- Searching for Man Files
- Using Wildcards
- Executing Multiple Commands
- Moving to More Advanced Uses of the Command Line
Finding Help
Each command on your computer includes a manual page—or man page—that contains a list of the options available. Man pages are traditionally rather terse and intended only for referencing the different ways the command should be used. For a friendlier introduction to using commands, we recommend a Google search.
To view a man page (such as the man page for ls
), run:
username@computer:~$ man ls
The man page command itself has a number of options (run man man
to see them), and one of the most useful is -k
. This option allows you to search the man pages for a particular word. This is useful when you don’t remember the command. As an example, you could find all commands related to processes by running:
username@computer:~$ man -k processes
The remainder of this chapter gives a brief introduction to some of the more common and useful commands you will encounter and want to learn, organized in categories based on how they are used. We end with a short list of some other resources for further research.