Introduction To The Command Line

This document provides a brief description of the Linux™ command line. It is not a complete guide, but rather an introduction to complement Kubuntu's graphical tools.


Introduction

"Under Linux™ there are GUIs (graphical user interfaces), where you can point and click and drag and hopefully get work done without first reading lots of documentation. The traditional Unix™ environment is a CLI (command line interface), where you type commands to tell the computer what to do. That is faster and more powerful, but requires finding out what the commands are." -- from man intro(1)

This guide describes some basic GNU™/ Linux™ shell commands. It is not intended to be a complete guide to the command line, just an introduction to complement Kubuntu's graphical tools.

  • All command names, file names, or paths to directories will be shown using a monospace font.

  • The commands should be issued from a command prompt within a Terminal and will be shown as:

    command to type

  • Command Line Linux™ is case sensitive. User, user, and USER are each different and distinct in Linux™.