So just to be clear I went with a very lazy move to linux from windows. I was not looking to use my day to day in a unixy type way and wanted something that I can install and go without much muss or fuss. So I went with zorin and yeah I have dropped to the command line for some apt installs or such but bascially it was only as needed. Very minimal. Anyway today Im messing with folders and files and suddenly it hit me. Im on linux I can do a lot of this easier with the command line. I know its stupid but my day to day sorta has a mouse brain guie mode and I sorta forget how much easier it is to do some stuff using syntax. So going forward im going to be bringing up the command line to do the things that are quicker.
EDITED - guys I have used command line for years. before there even was a gui. Im trying to say I grew out of the habit but using linux at home is getting me back into it.
Moving files, deleting files, text editing, converting files, stuff like btop, a lot really.
When I started I watched a few “linux cli tutorial” and “bash basics” or “bash for beginners” type videos on youtube and followed along in my terminal like a class, pausing when needed. That’s all it took for me to be off to the races learning more because of just how easy it is to do a lot of stuff, and I still learn more all the time.
Couple tips (really some of this applies regardless of cli or gui):
Keep offsite back-ups, just in case. Worst case scenario you reinstall and replace your files.
Be careful with sudo but otherwise you’ll be fine. That’s not to say don’t use sudo just be mindful.
Learn just the basics at first and then learn more as you go and get more comfortable, I kinda use the unix philosophy for it here and only learn it if I need it, most often.
You can save semi-commonly used commands to a txt file and reference it later, really helps for stuff you only use every now and again. There’s also the history command and ctrl+r but I still find the file useful.
It really isn’t as hard as it had looked before I started, and I use it constantly now.
Thanks! I’ll get into that. But how is moving/deleting files faster or better in the terminal? Isn’t it easier to just right click and move/delete?
I find sometimes the gui takes a while to manipulate say 300 folders. Like if I want to move all the mp4 files from a folder structure into another directory but leave everything else you can use something like
find /path/to/piracy/directory/ -name '*.mp4' -exec cp -r {} /path/to/piracy/storage/ \;And it’ll send em on over.
And I didn’t remember that command, I had it in a script, so to find it to post here I just typed:
cat ~/Documents/scripts/scriptname/And hit enter, and it gave me the info in the file. Tbh it was even easier than that, with tab completion I just had to type:
cat Doc[tab]/sc[tab]/sc[tab]
But back to the piracy, then to delete everything left over from that first script (like .nfo files) just
cd ~/piracy/directory/ rm -r * exitAnd will remove everything instantly.
To make it easier you can make a script with the first command, even chain it with the same for avi etc, and you could probably have it auto clean the source directory afterwards, but I like to do that manually. You can also (in most piracy programs) tell it to run a script on complete, so you could have that all automated by that process (if you don’t store them in an external drive like me.) And you can get way fancier with it too, I’m very much still learning, there’s way more that can be done pretty easily. I do still use the GUI sometimes too though and for some stuff it is easier, it’s definitely not an all or nothing thing, both is better!
Also I’m totally not a pirate that was just an example…cough cough.
Oh, right now I’m sure that it is way easier to use the mouse, because most people have been practicing using the mouse and a GUI for years and years. Once you’ve had practice with the terminal and autocomplete you can do most tasks fast far quicker.
Staring at this browser, see how long it would take you to grab your mouse, click the file explorer, navigate to /etc/, and then locate and open the fstab file (there are over 100 files and directories in this directory). 10 seconds? 15?
I’m using a terminal called yakuake and it’s bound to F12. So if I press F12, a terminal window slides down in the top middle of my screen. It’s always on top as long as it is visible so nothing can take focus away. To do the same task I press: F12, type “cat /et” <tab key>“fs”<tab key> <enter key>. If I wanted to edit it, I’d type nvim instead of cat. If I wanted to copy it somewhere I’d type cp instead of cat and then press, at the end of the previous command: “./pro”<tab key>.
If it’s a command that I’ve typed before, I can press CTRL+R in the terminal and it will open a search of my terminal command history. I can start typing part of the command and the search results will show me the top 25 commands that (fuzzy) matches what I’ve typed, I can press up and down to select the command I’m after, enter to put it into the command line.
Once you’re in the mindset of thinking about problems from a terminal point of view there are a lot of useful applications. If you’d rather move files in a GUI-like experience (a TUI) you can use nnn, a TUI file manager. Still have to use a mouse to change music? Run mpd and ncmpcpp. nvim gives you a text editor, tmux the ability to open multiple terminal sessions inside of the terminal.
Much like switching to Linux from Windows, it takes a bit of learning initially but that little bit of learning will pay dividends.
Thanks for the inside! Yakuake looks interesting.