Linux Tutorial - Basic Command Line

Hey, what's going on guys? I wanted to

make a video for people that are new to

Linux and new to the command line to

maybe help you out a little bit and show

you how to navigate the terminal and do

some very basic tasks. So a lot of people

ask me why I work on Windows in most of

my videos, and let me just clarify by

saying that I'm in no way of shape or

form a Windows Fanboy. I actually like

working on Linux better for web

development programming. There is a

few reasons why I have Windows installed

on my main machine. One is for the

recording software. I use Camtasia

which works flawlessly for what I need it

to do. And I haven't found a Linux-based

solution that works how I need it

to and processes the videos as fast

as I need them to. I also use Adobe

Photoshop and then a lot of other

Windows-based tools. I also have six

monitors, and it's a pain in the ass to

try and get them working with the Ubuntu

and working with the drivers.

I know I could do it if I really

tried, but it's just something that

hinders me. Another reason is gaming. I

have a pretty beefy system with SLI

graphics cards. And, obviously, if you

play games, you want to run Windows. Now,

that's not a huge deal because I very

rarely play games anymore because I'm so

busy. But that is one of the issues.

And then the main reason I use Windows

in a lot of my videos is because I'm

trying to reach everybody of all skill

sets. And chances are, a person that is

just learning HTML and front-end

development is running Windows. And they

may get lost if I'm using Linux or Mac.

Now, I know many of you do use Linux

or Mac, but I think that there's more of

a chance of a Linux or Mac user knowing

and understanding what I'm doing in

Windows than the other way around. So

that's probably the biggest reason. For

my own personal development, I do work on

Linux in a virtual machine. And

I'm going to start using Linux more in

my videos. So anyway, let's jump in and

learn some basic commands. Now, if you're

a Windows user I would suggest getting

something like VMware or VirtualBox and

installing a Linux distribution. You may

not want to go as far as to install it

on your main machine for your everyday

use, but you should get into it and start

to experiment with it. As far as distros, I

prefer Ubuntu or Debian, and there's

also- there's a lot to choose from, okay?

For beginners, I would recommend Debian,

Ubuntu, or even Linux Mint, openSUSE- sorry,

openSUSE, however you say it, is a little

more complicated, but I do like that as

well. So let's get into it.

Currently Ubuntu is using the Unity

desktop interface, but you can use a

different environment if you want. And

we're going to go and open the terminal.

Now, I use a program called Terminator. So

that's what I'm going to be using. If you

install Ubuntu fresh, you're going to

just have the regular terminal which

is this right here, but it doesn't really

matter. You use the same commands. All

right, so let's go ahead and just make

that a little bigger. Now, when you first

open your terminal, you're going to

be in your home directory, okay? Every

user on a Linux system has a home

directory, much like on Windows, if you go

to users, you have your usernames

for each account. So Linux does the same

thing. In fact, if we look at the file

manager, and you can see that actually

opens in the home directory as well.

If we go to the actual root directory,

it's going to be in home. And you'll see

I have a folder called 'brad', okay? I

only have one user on this system. So

over here, you can actually check your-

what path you're in with the command PWD,

okay? You can see I'm in home brad. So

that's the First Command. Now if you

want to show the listings like you do in

file manager in your command line, you

can use the ls, okay, the listing command.

And you can see that these are the same

folders that we're seeing here, all right?

Now, with commands, you also have options,

okay? Most commands have some options you

can use. Now with ls, we have an option

of -a. And what that does is it'll show

everything, even the hidden files, the

system files that begin with the dot,

it'll show those as well. By

default, those are hidden, okay? Much like

hidden files in Windows. Now we can

also use the -l. So if we say ls -l, and

that just shows us some extra

information. The time it was created, the

date, the size. Now, this here at the

beginning, this looks kind of weird.

What this is is the permissions of the

folder or file. Basically it's broken up

into three parts. The first is for the

owner, the permissions of the owner of

the folder or file. Then the permissions

for the group, okay, because you can also

have user groups and then the permission

for everyone else, for the rest of the

world, or the public. Now, these basically

stand for delete. The D is delete. Read,

write, and execute, okay? So basically the

owner of the folder or file has all these

permissions. They can do whatever they

want. The group can only execute and read,

and then the rest of the world can only

execute, okay? So they can't change

anything at all. That's what that is.

And then here you'll see brad brad.

The reason it says it twice is because

one is the user and then one is the

group, okay? So there's actually a group

called 'brad'.

And you can change these with

certain commands, but I'm not really

going to get into that today. I just want

to be- I want to keep things very basic.

So that's the ls command.

Now, the next command I want to

look at is mkdir, okay? And that is make

directory and it does just that. It

will create a directory, so let's create

a folder or a directory inside of our

home and let's call this- we'll call it

dir1, all right? And over here you can

see that now we have dir1. If we do ls,

you see dir1, all right? Let's create

another one called dir2.

Okay so now we have these two

directories. And the next command we're

going to look at is cd and that's change

directory. So if we want to go into

dir1, we can say CD dir1.

And you'll see that the prompt here

has now changed. It shows us where we are.

If we do pwd, it'll show us we're in

directory one, okay?

Now, if we want to go back one level,

back into the home, we can do CD space

dot dot. And so you can see now we're

back in the home, okay? If you want to

navigate to the absolute root of your

system, you could do cd and then slash.

And now if we do ls, you'll see we're in

the actual root of the entire system,

all right? If you want to go back home,

you could just do cd, and that'll bring

you back home. You can also do cd and

then this tilde, which is the key

that's to the left of the number one

key. And that basically represents

home. So we can do that. If we want to go

into dir2, let's say in the home, we

could do- from anywhere we could do the

tilde slash dir2, okay? And if we want to

go back out, go cd dot dot. And then let's

go back into dir1,

okay? Another helpful command is

clear. If we do clear, it'll just do just

that. It'll clear out the terminal,

all right? So you know how to

find your path. You know how to create

directories, how to list the contents, how

to change directories. That's very

basic. Now what we're going to do is

I'm going to show you how to create a

file. So let's say we want to create a

text file.

We could use the touch command. So we say

touch, we'll say file one dot text. And now

if we do an ls, you can see we have that

file one. Now, if we want to edit that

file, of course, you could do that from

within your file manager. So you could

just go to file one dot text, and I think,

yeah, it'll open with gedit if you open

it here. But you can also use command

based- command line-based text editors. So

the one that I would recommend for

for beginners is Nano, okay? It's very

easy to use. Now if we say Nano

file one dot text, it's going to bring

us into a screen like this. So this is

the Nano editor. And like I said, it's

pretty easy to use. Basically we could

just- let's just say hello world,

okay? Now, if we wanted to exit out, we

want to do a control 'x', and then it's going

to ask if we want to to save or not, okay?

So we're going to say y for yes and then

enter, and then that will edit the file

and save it, okay? So control 'x' to escape,

yes or no to save,

okay? And you won't get prompted if

you don't edit it at all, you won't get

prompted to save or not. Now, you can also

use the cat command to see what's in a

file. So we'll say cat file1.txt, and

it'll show us what's in it.

It basically takes the input and puts

it to standard output, which is what's

shown here. Now, if this is a really,

really long file and you have to page

down, you can use less instead of cat. So

file one

dot text, and you could- you'd be able to

page down, okay, and see the whole file.

And then to get out of it, you just want

to hit 'q' and that'll quit, okay? So that's

cat and less.

Now, let's say we want to rename

this file, okay? So there's a command to

move files and rename, and that's mv. So

if we say mv file1.txt

and space file2.txt,

okay? And then we do an ls. You can see

that uh file one has now been renamed to

file two and if we say cat

file2.txt you can see it's the hello

world

now we can also copy files so let's say

we want to take file two and create file

one but also keep file two then we could

do CP okay that's the copy command file

2.txt and we want to copy it to file

one.txt and now if we look at the

contents we have both files and if we

say cat file

one hello world okay so let's clear this

out

now we can move and copy to other

locations as well so if we want to let's

say copy file one.txt we want to copy it

to let's say um till day for the home

and then slash

dir2 SL

file1.txt

okay and then we'll switch directories

let's say

CD dot dot and then CD dir2

wh CD dur 2 and LS and there's the file

one okay so we can do that as

well now if you want to delete a file or

remove a file you can use the RM command

say Okay so let's say we want to delete

file one we can say RM file1.txt

and now if we look now it's gone all

right now if you want to remove a

directory let's go out to our home and

let's say we want to remove directory 2

we can do

rmd dur 2 okay so now if we do

LS directory 2 is now gone now I'm going

to put it back we're going to make

directory dir 2 and then I'm going to go

into

it and I'm going to create a

file so touch file1.txt and I'm going to

go back out to my rout and I'm going to

try to

delete dir

2 and now you see it says failed to

remove dir 2 directory is not empty so

this command isn't going to work if the

directory is empty if it's if it has

files in it and you want to delete it

you want to use RM but if you just do RM

dir2 it'll say can't remove it so you

need to add the dash capital r uh option

which is for recursive so you want to do

um rm- R and then dir 2 and now if we do

an LS dir2 is gone as well as all the

files that are in

it so let's clear that out and then the

next command I want to look at is which

so what witch does is it'll search for

um a a file or a folder's location and

give you that location so uh let's see

say we want to look for the mongod d uh

application which is the the mongod DB

server we could say which mongod D and

that'll show you exactly where it's in

it's in the the USR bin mongod D okay so

um that can come in pretty

handy uh so what else let's say let's

use the history command and history will

basically show you your last uh what is

it 500 or so 400 well I think it's your

last 500 commands

okay so that's that can be handy see

what you've been doing um or to see what

someone else has been

doing let's see what else so we we've

went over pretty much all the basics of

you know moving files and folders around

and deleting them and renaming them so

those those are the most important those

are the things that you absolutely need

to know um now some things you can't run

as your user you have to run it as the

root user and you never want to be

really you know mess around with stuff

logged in as the the the root user so

for that you could use pseudo so let's

try to run for instance app get update

which I'll go over in a minute um it's

not going to let us basically it says

that we don't have the permission to so

if we do

pseudo app get update it's going to ask

for our

password and then it'll run it okay uh

and that's just updating our packages

and I'll get to that in a second um so

you want to use pseudo to run run as

root let's clear this

out now let's look at some system

commands so these are you don't need

these to be able to to navigate or

anything but uh they're good to know so

first one is if

config and this is just like ip config

on Windows it basically it's going to

give you all your network information

your ethernet cards um your IP address

your local IP address um your loop back

things like that um pretty much

identical to IP config in Windows if

you've ever used that for wireless you

can do IW

config and that's going to show you I

don't have any Wireless on this machine

but if you did it would show you that

stuff okay um now if you want

to Ping another machine or uh over the

either over the Internet or on your

local network you could say ping for

instance let's say

google.com to see if that's online you

can see we're getting a we're getting a

response back from our request okay and

it's just going to keep going like this

but if you want to stop it you can do a

contrl c okay so if we try to Ping

something that's most likely not a

domain you'll see we get unknown host

okay so that's how you can tell if if

you can actually reach a certain machine

or not okay so let's look at some other

system commands um let's see we have

uname let's do un name- a that's going

to just basically give us a summary of

our system the operating system the

version uh things like that okay we also

have uh let's

do

BL uh BL I'm sorry

Blk and what that does is it basically

shows us our hard drive so I have a um

an uh my regular hard drive and then

what's called a swap okay so when Linux

partitions your drive it it puts a

little bit aside for a swap file here

um let's see what else if we do top

that's another command that's basically

going to show us our processes and um

how much memory and CPU they're taking

up things like that um kind of like the

the Task Manager in Windows even though

there is a a system

monitor right here that you can use in

Linux as well and that'll show you

resources stuff like that the running

processes okay and to get out of this

you just want to hit

Q let's see what else what else did I

want to do uh DF is another command

that'll show us our um available and

unavailable dis space we have lsusb

which will show devices like USB hubs

things like that um for PCI stuff you

can use LS PCI and that'll I'll show you

all that crap uh a lot of which I don't

even understand but it's available to

you um let's see I think that's that's

pretty much

it oh package managers packages managers

are are a big part of of most Linux

distributions um different distributions

use different managers Debbie auntu uses

apt get so we can say

pseudo apt get and then install and then

we can install any package that's

available so let's say we want to

install filezilla which is an FTP client

okay so as long as it's available it'll

go ahead and install that for us on our

system all right and now if we go to up

here and we search for filezilla there

it is okay we can move it over here if

we want and it's as easy as that um

which is much easier than in in you know

in Windows having to go to the site

download it go through the installer um

this is one of the the best reasons to

use Linux um now if we want to get rid

of it we could simply do

pseudo AP get

remove

filezilla and that will we'll say

yes and that will remove it you can see

it just disappeared okay um now if you

want to update or see if there's

available updates for um packages on

your system you can do

pseudo appt get update and it'll run

through and check everything um

and uh if it finds something it'll let

you

know so I think that's pretty much it

guys um I don't want to get too deep

into anything here this is meant to be

just for you know a beginner guide um oh

we also have the shutdown command we

could say pseudo

shutdown and if you wanted to restart

you could do a dasr but I'm going to

Halt shut the whole thing down so I'm to

do Dash and then you could also set a

time if you wanted to do like 10 minutes

you could do that but I'm just going to

do

now okay and it's going to go ahead and

shut down so hopefully you guys enjoyed

this and um if you did and you're not

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and that's it thanks for watching