1.0 What is Terminal ?
Now, one of the biggest reasons for someone to switch to Linux is to use what is arguably the most powerful feature of the Linux operating system, and that is the terminal. Now, if you’ve ever seen a film where a hacker or a computer genius is sat behind that computer typing commands into what looks like a big black box on their computer screen, that black box is called the terminal. This is how the terminal looks like –
Now, at one time, the entire Linux operating system was purely terminal based. But as time has gone on, more graphical tools have been developed. Up until now, well, we have these beautiful desktop environments like what we see on Ubuntu. Now, fundamentally, the main difference between using the terminal and using normal graphical methods that you’re probably already familiar with from even using a windows or a Mac, is that instead of pointing and clicking with the mouse to control your computer, you’ll be typing with the keyboard instead.
Now, Linux is unique in that the development of Linux is inseparable from the terminal, and this means that knowing how to use the terminal gives you pretty much absolute control over how your computer works.By using the terminal, you can do pretty much anything that you want with your Linux computer.Now, you can’t get this level of control over your computer in any other operating system, and this makes the terminal an incredible skill to learn.
So let’s go ahead and get started. All right, so here we are on a beautiful Ubuntu desktop. Now I’m going to show you how you can go ahead and open the terminal using graphical methods. Now down the bottom left here.
You’ll notice a a set of nine dots. And if you hover over it, it says show applications. But if you scroll down or you click this, over here, you’ll see a program here called Terminal.
But there’s also some keyboard shortcuts that will make this process a whole lot faster. For example, if you want to open the terminal using just your keyboard, you can press Control + Alt + Letter T and you will find that there we are. The terminal pops up and if you want to close it, you just press Control + D and it goes away. So you can see how quickly this, how quick this might happen.
You make an excellent first step already and should start feeling a bit more like a Linux pro because now you know how to actually open and close the terminal. It’s just like any other program on your computer. It’s not scary and it’s actually rather easy to use, as we’ll show you in the next few articles.
You’re going to be running your first commands in the terminal. And trust me, they’re pretty awesome. So for that goodness, I’ll see you in the next article.
