You may refer to that if you want to know more on this topic. I have explained it in my article on hard links. Even directory is a special kind of file that has the memory address of files and directories inside it. You’ll even find commands like rmdir, mkdir hinting that they deal with directories.Īdditional note: Everything is a file in Linux. However, it is better to use ‘directory’ because this is what you’ll see referenced in various tutorials, documents etc. You can use the term ‘folder’ for the directory, which should be fine. You can go inside the directories but you cannot enter files.
You probably know what a file is but you may get confused with the term ‘directory’. The two terms you hear the most in Linux are directory and files. In a multi-user environment, you can easily figure out which user you are using and if it is a root user. Simple information like this helps indirectly. For regular users, Ubuntu has a different configuration of the prompt than the root. And hence the joke that pound is stronger than dollar.ĭid you notice that when I switched to the root user, the command prompt looked different without any colors? This is another reminder that prompt is not a standard and is configured explicitly. For the root user, it ends with pound or hash (#) symbol.
Tilde (~) means the home directory of the present user.įor regular users, the prompt ends with dollar ($) symbol. The colon (:) in the prompt is a separator to distinguish between the hostname and the current location. You can get the following information at a glance: Ubuntu terminal has configured the prompt to show you a few things. It is configurable and looks different in different distributions, terminal applications and shells. What you see before the space where you type the command is called the prompt. Subscribe to It’s FOSS YouTube channel for interesting Linux videos 3. I won’t go into details anymore to keep things on track. This video by Luke Smith explains it in detail with examples. It’s a term for the interface where you can run and execute commands. Many programming languages have command line interfaces. Every operating system has a command line interface. The Command line is not something specific to Linux. In the Ubuntu terminal, prompt gives you some information which you’ll see in detail in the later sections of this article. In some old terminals, you would just have a blinking cursor to the place where you can type the commands. Prompt is what you see before the space where you type the commands. Often people think that screen they see in the terminal is the shell. The commands you type are interpreted by the shell. Bash is the most popular of them all and the default shell on most Linux distributions. Like terminals, there are various shells as well. The terminal runs a shell, usually Bash shell by default in Ubuntu. Shell is difficult to visualize separately from the terminal. The terminal is a graphical application that runs a shell by default. Terminal vs shell vs prompt vs command lineīefore you see anything else, you should know the difference between different terminologies that are often (incorrectly) used interchangeably. However, my favorite way is to use the Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut in Ubuntu. You can open the terminal in Ubuntu by looking for it in the system menu. Open the terminal with a keyboard shortcut This article specifically focuses on the default Ubuntu terminal, which implements the GNOME terminal. After all, the terminal is just a GUI tool that gives you access to a shell where you can run the commands.ĭifferent terminal applications (properly called terminal emulators) look different and have slightly different functions and features (like different keyboard shortcuts, color combinations, fonts, etc). The terminal you see is just one of the various terminal applications available. This should help new Ubuntu desktop users know the terminal and use it more efficiently. This article focuses on explaining small, basic, and often ignored things about using the terminal. Some knowledge of basic Linux commands always helps in such cases but this article is not about that. New users are often clueless about many things. Well, that happens with most Linux users.Įven if you are using Ubuntu as a desktop system, you may sometimes have to enter the terminal. However, you gradually start liking it once you get to know it.
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