Beginner's Guide To The Linux Terminal

I've been receiving a lot of questions from new Linux users that want to learn the terminal and the command line. One viewer recently asked me if there was one video of mine that he could watch to learn this stuff. And I don't really have a video that is comprehensive and that is aimed for absolute beginner's to the terminal. So I'm making that video now...
REFERENCED:
► www.gnu.org/software/bash/man... - Bash Manual
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Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys!

[@dam0ne]

Table of contents: 0:58 Opening the terminal 1:20 Zooming on the terminal 2:00 Print working directory - pwd 2:34 Change directory - cd 4:18 Clearing the screen - clear / Control+l 4:45 List contents of directories - ls 7:12 Manual pages - man 8:07 Creating files - touch 9:30 Showing file contents - cat 9:49 Creating directories - mkdir 10:23 Moving files - mv 11:36 Copying files - cp 12:14 Removing files - rm 13:05 Removing directories - rmdir 13:30 Removing not empty directories - rm -rf 15:06 Finding program binaries - which / whereis 16:29 Finding files in filesystem - locate / mlocate / find 17:54 Printing text - echo 19:21 Printing text - printf 21:26 Cat from the top of a file - less 22:00 Finding strings of text in a file - grep 22:50 Piping program outputs - | 23:19 Find and replace strings - sed 25:38 Printing first or last lines of a file - head / tail 26:54 File permissions - chmod 29:50 Console command history - history 30:43 Repeat last command - !! 31:56 Closing programs - kill / killall / xkill 33:20 Closing programs - htop 34:22 Testing connection - ping 35:11 Downloading things - wget 35:51 Getting the date - date 36:18 Calendar - cal 36:23 Calculator - bc 36:56 Configuring shell aliases - .bashrc editing 38:21 Updating Debian-based systems - apt update && apt upgrade

[@toufiknopixl9973]

You're a hero

[@JessicaFEREM]

hey DT, copy and paste this into the description, after some time, it'll pop up as a chapter select on youtube.

[@pop4ti]

Thank you!

[@14u2ponder]

I don't think kill, chmod, wget, sed, ping, aliases, are beginners subjects. I also think you should include something about ed (or how to make a file).

[@keylanoslokj1806]

At around 40:00 when creating the "aptup" alias, the system recommended i don't do it there directly, but at a seperate bash aliases file. Can you do a tutorial on how to do that?

[@raymondgradzewicz]

Do I already know how to use the terminal? Yes. Am I still going to watch the video? Yes.

[@kevyyar]

Lol I feel the same way

[@favor94]

@Learn Linux this thing sometimes happen with me, thats why i watch any tutorial pops out on my timeline

[@mskiptr]

Well, u just learned that `rmdir` exists. Been using `tree $dir`, `rm -r $dir` untill now…

[@raymondgradzewicz]

@@mskiptr I actually knew that one already.

[@mskiptr]

@@raymondgradzewicz *I Sorry for that typo; indeed quite misleading

[@amjedbelgacem8218]

this 42 min long video is literally worth a 4 hours lecture at the university, great delivery, simple and straight to the point. you earned a sub, keep the good work !

[@zhaadd]

university is very redundant in almost everything tbh

[@amjedbelgacem8218]

@@zhaadd couldn’t agree more

[@im-a-trailblazer]

I think even more, the way he lays out the difference and best use cases for cat, less and grep for example. Could be a multi day or week dive into getting to grips with everything. He also earned me as a sub. I am not using arch btw

[@chrishayward3520]

Those chips were just teasing me the whole time! I'm ready for the party size!

[@DistroTube]

Shortly after recording this, I plunged headfirst into that bag of Lay's. I should know better than to buy the big Family Size bags of chips.

[@guyincognito5663]

“I’ll just eat a couple and leave some for later” Sure you will.

[@curvesoftcomputerco.9928]

@@DistroTube Nothing like a classic Lay's though. Lol!

[@josephsagotti8786]

We need some of these every once in a while

[@akirubamiru6700]

Derek that a great video not for beginner but also good for revision although could you do stamps times? Thank you Derek!

[@LinuxClassroom]

Having taught Linux for several years now, most students really struggle with paths. It seems to be so abstract for many beginners.

[@LinuxClassroom]

@Learn Linux Absolutely! I love my job.

[@sigmundfreud4472]

😍

[@BlackHawk2029]

Yeah the Linux file system is REALLY foreign for anyone coming from another OS. I'm 6 months in running Kubuntu as my primary OS and I still struggle with it occasionally.

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

@Learn Linux whats so hard about it?

[@jon-h]

@Terminalforlife (LL) Windows is actually the only outlier as far as PC OS are concerned. BSD-Unix, GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurd and MacOS are all filesystem hierarchy compliant. MacOS is just very clever to hide this fact from the user. If you have trouble with the filesystem hierarchy, I'd urge you to read the reference documentation: refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/fhs It goes into great detail about not only where everything is, but also why it is where it is specifically.

[@ShaunakHub]

An excellent video. Will be immensely helpful for new users. Really appreciate the work you doing for everyone. Thankfully I was never scared of the Terminal as I come from the MS-DOS days 😀

[@AgentFortySeven47]

DT you are the best Linux teacher I could ever ask for. This is such a helpful guide to the Linux terminal and you go at a really good pace. You explain things in a very clear way and I find this tutorial very easy to follow. Keep up the amazing work!

[@SearchFT]

In less than 5min you tought me more than I expected. Thanks a lot for this video. Will rewatch it a few times, making notes 🙏

[@joshstrawder]

I’ve learned more about using Linux from this channel than I have about just customizing Linux...

[@Soochoup]

Solid tutorial; Not a beginner but discovered a thing or two. Never hurts to go back to the basics !

[@sebastianucero7535]

A very packed but most useful video on the Terminal so far. Thank You so so much.

[@famailiaanima]

00:04 gnew subscribers lol

[@Prophet6000]

This is a great video i just started learning and understanding the terminal this week.

[@XGames_Mrated]

This was really encouraging to watch. Really helpful to improve my work

[@noahlomax1]

This is one of the GREATEST beginner Linux tutorials on KZbin. Thank you very much for this course of yours, sir. I've also subscribed for more.

[@yashpandey350]

alias commands are dope, I am in love with alias commands literally I'm using them daily for a lot of tasks.

[@yashpandey350]

@@etishome4099 Think in this way, I have multiple projects and I have distributed in separate folder so instead of cd .... I can simply make an alias for projects, fronted projects, backend, movies.....When you have few things its okay to avoid but when your work is in different folders everyday you need alias for that.🙂🙂🙂🙂

[@yashpandey350]

@@etishome4099 I know most of the cmd command bro, Sorry I misjudged the question. 😊😊😊😊

[@poisonpotato1]

This brings me back to 2014. Freshman year of college we had to learn all of this in a required course that was prerequisite for every engineering major

[@spectregaming1888]

Fantastic work! Great information and pacing. Thank you

[@NomdePlume337]

I’ve been learning Linux for the last couple weeks and this is by far the best video I’ve found so far

[@akshatkumargems]

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on Linux terminal for beginners! Your explanations and jokes made the learning process so much more enjoyable and approachable. Your guide was instrumental in helping me get a better understanding of the Linux terminal and I appreciate all the time and effort you put into creating it. Your passion for teaching and commitment to helping others truly shines through. Keep up the great work and I look forward to learning more from you in the future! 💌💌

[@jakealbertson1130]

Thank you. New to Linux and this answered a lot of questions I had.

[@ChuckLandry]

Just found this video and first time seeing your channel. VERY easy to follow and great information for someone new like me. Thank you!

[@2009researcher]

I applaud channels like this. Here's why. These resources are introducing people to our other options. I converted my computers to Linux a while back. I have no regrets at all. I got tired of questionable operating system behavior which included ads and popups. Since I put Linux MX on some machines and Linux Zorin on others, I'm experiencing nice tight operating systems that 'I' can trust. No ads. No popups. No operating system stubbornness. It just works! In my case, I had another observation. The amount of time I'd observe how often my hard drive and internet lights would be working when nobody is using the machines. With Linux I don't see this activity with these lights. An occasional flicker or two, but no 10 minute sessions of watching these lights showing activity. I'm fond of Linux MX because it lets you change the OS system Icon images. I put my business logo on the start button. I'm a very happy Linux user. Very happy. 👍

[@RiKo-uh9ot]

Great video, haven't finished it yet, but I really wanted to leave a good feed-back here. So far so good.

[@aronwomack359]

Love your videos man, you got me wanting to try Arch out. I'm running windows 11, and Ubuntu on a cheap laptop, and your videos have been priceless.

[@glenngenoway7990]

Thank you for that teaching! I'm one of those who will be reviewing this information several times as I learn to use the command line.

[@daftmario123]

Thanks dude, this was helpful. I've used Linux in the past and executed commands in the terminal, but I would just copy/paste the commands and not really understand what they meant or what exactly was going on. This helped fill in the gaps I had.

[@NerdPowah]

Good stuff. I was able to learn a thing or two even though I've been using linux for quite awhile now. Really cool that you covered bc. One of my college professors actually helped write it!

[@tylalikesfood]

Extremely useful for a beginner trying to learn to bash in a terminal window, really needed this for work as I'm expected to handle linux and ubuntu OS based systems.

[@im-a-trailblazer]

I literally changed this comment 3 times. This is exactly the video i was looking for. U answered a lot of questions i had about commands in the terminal i built up the last weeks. Great stuff man love it.

[@ScottKentEdu]

This was awesome. Thank you for the video. Made so much more sense than trying to figure it out on my own.

[@pawel4099]

Thanks a lot. I went linux(mint)-only like 3 moths ago and still not properly aquired basic bash so this video is EXACTLY what i needed ;)

[@michaelpezzulo4413]

It has been 3 1/2 years since my intro to Linux course, and this is a great review.

[@chris-terrell-liveactive]

Very helpful as I begin working with Linux, i haven't seen anything else on using terminal commands so this is an excellent reference thank you.

[@sijomatheweleppumkal]

Configuring shell aliases - awesome ! Thank you, dear...

[@MRC_MRC]

you're an amazing teacher, in a first 4 minutes I learned more that other 20 minutes videos

[@xDarkPx]

I just started "Introduction to Operating Systems" two weeks ago and I am so slow and lost. I was able to complete my assignments, but they came with step by step instructions. This is some really intimidating stuff for a guy who left high school and has been working dead end jobs for 20 years. I decided to just pick something, and that was a Cybersecurity Program. If you have any tips, I welcome your advice because this video taught me a lot in under an hour. Thanks!!!

[@tikutiku2368]

State-of-the-art tutorial. Thanks for sharing!😎

[@cgcauldron5427]

Epic! I've gone through many other tuts, and this one is way on top. Thx a lot!

[@currentlykent4593]

Getting into this at the ripe age of 36. This was extremely helpful. Much obliged.

[@abdourahman87]

I absolutely recommend anyone new top linux to watch this video.Its covers most of if not all the basic commands of the terminal Thanks DT☺

[@origenadamantine7875]

Thanks so much DT! This is terrific.

[@ivyndane10]

My first day watching linux commands after ccna certification just picking one or two commands thanks very much

[@italinhorn4455]

Yooo DT thanks for the video I just got into recently so this is a great help.

[@busyrand]

Thank you abundantly for this thorough, grounded instruction... This program was a joy to work through. Lots of my fears were relieved and I'm no longer walking on eggshells as a new Linux Mint user... I have previous experience with Windows Subsystem for Linux for a couple years, bu this is still a different animal with a new file system. Well done.

[@kardelenaydogan3793]

i cant thank you enough for this video. i just started the odin project, installed a dual boot but the linux terminal always confused me. i just watched your video and the way you teach is excellent!!! thank you so much.

[@user-yy2zz7wk1z]

Run "man intro", it's a great intro (obviously) to using the Terminal. "info" is good on systems that support it but a bit harder to move around navigate. "man man" is another good place to start, and then from there "man command" (insert any command to learn about). Also "cd --help" or "command --help" is a good cheat sheet. depending your shell (most often bash), "man bash" will get more in depth. "man zsh" would be for the ZSH shell. If you want a bonus to take things to the next next level. Full screen your terminal, get rid of any menu bars or scrollbars, and then run "byobu" to get a terminal multiplexer (window manager) to split the terminal, have multiple tabs, print system info on status bar, pretty much a terminal based GUI so you aren't stuck in a single shell and can start multitasking similar to having multiple GUI windows open but way more efficient and hacker--ish haha.

[@darylwayne611]

Awesome video! You made this so easy to learn! Thank you!

[@testchannel-ignore9559]

What you said about moving, copying, creating deleting files via a terminal is so true. I liked the tip about asking beginners to re-watch, and try the commands. Of course I am an old hat at this, but was looking for a video for co-workers.

[@MrMiroto]

Wow. On point, very dense information. Great work!

[@sambathleluyer640]

Thanks a lot. This is valuable for me, a new beginner into Linux Realm.

[@jasonk4442]

Thank you very much you are very easy to follow along with you should do entire sets of terminal tutorials heck I would even pay for them.

[@BrewmasterN8]

Im new! I am still learning but I have to say, if anyone else is learning alone like i am, then pit your frustrations to the side and keep trying. it is tough but you will get better at it before you even realize it. 😂 one day you will be watching a video like this and realize you need to fast forward because you know this stuff. 😎 I can navigate linux but not confidently,. I still cant really manipulate it very well. ..Took me many hours to finally get my external network adapter and Bluetooth mouse installed. I wasted a lot of time taking chillaxin breaks 😅 I probably already forgot how i did it. Videos like these are very helpful though and I am always searching for more. Thnak you

[@ivyndane10]

Woow so happy for you can I install it on my android phone

[@MelsRNRETRO]

Been Interested in learning Linux and your video is Excellent. TYVM 🤠

[@Valkebab]

Thank you so much! I'm very new to Linux and this helped me a lot

[@lumar5233]

I use LinuxMint 20.1 XFCE and the terminal app that came with Linux on my old Toshiba. To increase the text size on my terminal, I had to press the CTRL key and the SHIFT key together and tap the + key. When I pressed only the CTRL key and tapped the + key, the = sign would show on the command line. Using only the CTRL key and tapping the minus key, the text would become smaller. I am using a Toshiba Satellite C55-B5250, bought around 2015. Thanks for the easy to follow terminal video. :

[@xk2102]

Thank you DT! (for your keeping (me) company and your videos i've been binge-watching, not just this one..!)

[@DistroTube]

Glad you like them!

[@giovannikomis9805]

Excellent work, one of the best tutorials about beginning learn Linux.

[@johnstath9666]

Thanks Distro. Awesome presentation!!

[@ageema]

Derek Taylor, You are a hero! This is tutorial works for us os x folks too.

[@BrewmasterN8]

41:45 I wanna thank these folks too thank you for making it possible

[@realtimestatic]

Terminal meme man isn’t real he can’t hurt you Terminal meme man: 24:03

[@SuperCapello1]

Superb, straight to the point video. Thumbs up.

[@NemoOhd20]

Love the video and love this channel. Thanks!

[@PELVIS361]

This is great! Finally some explanations! Thanks 🙏

[@dawitsolomon2119]

sincerely Thank you ,this is eye opening .

[@INhumanLAST]

Thank you for the great tutorials , thanks to you I really learnt the use of terminal and vim Linux is fun again. Please share more fun things

[@cireeric]

Great explanation! This really helps!

[@BrewmasterN8]

Awesome video man! Nice pace and good info. Thabk you. Im in...

[@kiwon1974]

Really nice, using Linux for 2 months and learned 3,4 commands. Could you please do a intermediary guide too?

[@richardtwyning]

I've been using Linux at home on all my machines for ten years, but I always enjoy videos on using the terminal. You can ALWAYS learn a new trick or two, even after ten years :-)

[@bobwright8000]

Linux has been my daily driver for years, but I watched this just to see if there was anything I could learn. Sure enough, I have always used "cd .." to go up a directory. I never knew "cd -" would work also. Great job.

[@dandandrorivolleyball]

I mapped "cd .." to ".." in my bash_aliases a few months back and it feels amazing! I also love the shopt auto cd option in bash that lets me write the directory name without cd before it and it just cd's into it :)

[@dandandrorivolleyball]

Sorry, the command that lets you cd without typing "cd" is shopt -s autocd

[@kiiikoooPT]

yeap that is a windows thing I think, I also use that to go back and cd . go back to root :)

[@yash1152]

cd - doesnt take u up one dir, it takes u back to which directory you were before this one. and that might be up / down / side / anywhere. example, say i am in abc/def and you `cd xyz/uvw`. then `cd -` will bring you to that abc/def path, not xyz like cd .. would

[@bobwright8000]

@@yash1152 Thanks Yash

[@aloucks8]

This is a perfect video for learning Bash

[@bobpeters61]

I feel you on the terminal commands bit. "Can you recommend a video that will teach a total newbie everything about the terminal?" is sort of like, "I just bought my first guitar and don't even know a single cord. Can you recommend a video that will get me jamming like (insert your favorite superstar guitarist here)?"

[@Colaholiker]

I have been using Linux for a long time in parallel with Windows and exclusively for more than one and a half yearas, but I didn't know that there is a printf command. I am familiar with printf as a c function, but it was this video that taught me about the Linux command with the same name.

[@s-o-o-z]

This was extremely helpful. Thank you

[@adityaraj-vu1jr]

just moved to Mac from windows been a great help, thanks.

[@yaneve_t]

I like the green raining 0 and 1 on the screen at the back

[@MichaelVash7886]

Nice. I knew a lot of these but did not realize 'cd' would go to home and 'cd -' would go back to the previous folder I was in. Kept expecting to hear about 'cd ..' to go up a level

[@rajmah163]

DT , my son moved to linux because of you. I been using Linux on my "old" laptop 💻 and it work well. zoom works and the downside it's the battery drain fastly. love you from Malaysia 🇲🇾

[@priyojitdeb9127]

Thanks for this DT.

[@Magnetron692]

Hi Derek, many thanks! Dankeschön from Germany 😃👍🏻 Best wishes, Ralf

[@gimcrack555]

The first commands that I learned. I always called them navigation commands. Which is the main commands you run daily. People always ask how can you remember these commands. Well repetition for one thing. I always start with 10 commands. Learn them well, until it's burn into memory. Then go to the next 10 commands. Repeat until you get to 100 commands by heart.

[@rickcea1017]

Really great tutorial! Thanks!!!

[@jtjones4727]

Wow this is an awesome video. I'm not a linux beginner by any means, but I'm no advanced user either. Maybe intermediate. Anyhow, this was great. Just started the video a few mins back and I've already learned some basic things I should have already known, but somehow missed. Thanks.

[@StefanoVerugi]

this video is for me a real treasure thanks

[@rizzrak]

I just started using Linux and this is very helpful!

[@HikingFeral]

Just what i was looking for, thanks.

[@0marfans]

This was fantastic, thank you!

[@DistroTube]

Glad it was helpful!

[@mojommojom7098]

+1 to the previous comment, earned a sub because of this video. Great delivery and straight to the point. Thx

[@h2o40fpv]

Great stuff DT

[@petergeorgiev6876]

Well finally something meaningful... Congrats on this video!

[@ot0b]

I installed linux for the first time & this was fun. Thanks.

[@clausmartini1074]

Great video DT

[@dejanzabaljac6950]

I like to imagine sometimes that Arch users have some life issues and somebody tells them RTFM...

[@whatthehack1589]

Haha reverting them their poison. Nice

[@markkeilys]

LIFE HAS A MANUAL‽‽

[@whatthehack1589]

@@markkeilys ofcourse. Maybe

[@priyapepsi]

@@markkeilys there are many different manuals, some are outdated, some are conflicting, and some are bloat

[@markkeilys]

@@priyapepsi a fellow Theramin Trees fan? His video "instruction manual for life" is what that made me think of, and it's really good.

[@CF542]

This is a really great video intro to the command line. Do you have a video on finding and attaching local and network drives?

[@KingBawb-wg3jo]

Loved the video. I guess since I knew all these I'm no longer a beginner...lol yeah right. Still a beginner. I also would've also added "cd .." to go back one directory. At least I use that one a lot.

[@dmays67]

11min in and already learning new stuff. Nice!