| Beginner's Guide |
The command line shell
These days people interact with computers through a graphical interface with icons and buttons, using the mouse and keyboard to tell the computer what we want it to do. Graphical interfaces have the benefit of being visual, highly interactive, and easy to explore.
While these graphical desktops are the way most people interact with their computers, almost all operating systems have another method which can be used to give them instructions: the command line.
A command line is an interface where we are shown a line of text, called a prompt, and the system waits for us to type in our instructions. The computer then carries out our command and then shows a new prompt when it is ready for our next instruction.
The command line goes by different names on different operating systems. On macOS the command line program is called Terminal. On Windows it's often referred to as "command" or "cmd" or "the DOS prompt". On Linux we usually refer to the command line as the "shell" or "terminal".
While most commercial operating systems downplay their command line tools because they are old, complex to use, and difficult to explore for most people, Linux distributions tend to embrace the command line as a normal part of the operating system. Not that we need to use the command line, on Linux we can accomplish tasks using the desktop, just like on any other operating system. However, the speed and efficiency of the command line (and its programs) has resulted in most Linux distributions encouraging its usage.
Running a command line program on HeliumOS
(full image size: 2.1MB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
Another reason the Linux command line remains fairly popular is, as we mentioned in our desktop environments guide, there is a lot of variety in the graphical interfaces on Linux. There are a lot of different ways a desktop can be organized, and a lot of competing graphical tools. In contrast to this, most command line programs are nearly universal in the Linux community, meaning if you learn how to do a task on the command line on one distribution, it will probably work the same way on other distributions.
For people who want to learn about the Linux command line and how to use it to perform simple tasks, I recommend reading the Ubuntu command line for beginners tutorial. It covers everything from opening a command line window to moving files, to examples of commonly used commands. It's a good, practical place to start. If you want to continue exploring the command line and master its power, then we have a more advanced series of tutorials in our Tips and Tricks archive.
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