From zero to hero in Linux is a tutorial to learn the command line and basic Linux commands.

This is a great tutorial if you are:

  • Learning a programming language
  • Growing tech teams
  • Interested in Linux

Your computer setup

These commands are applicable if you are on Mac or Linux.

If you are on Windows. I recommend that you install Virtualbox and Linux.

Follow the setup details on this page if you are on Mac or Windows.

Video Tutorial

Open the Terminal

The Terminal is the interface to talk to the computer.

If you are on Mac. Open iterm2. If you are on Linux (Virtualbox on Windows). Search for Terminal.

The prompt will always show a dollar sign $ with your username and computer name such as user@computer:$.

You can change this prompt to show just a dollar sign $. And doing this customization is helpful once you start typing long commands.

Let’s look at some Linux commands.

$ pwd

This command is used to show the full path of the current directory.

List contents:

$ ls

This one is used to show the contents of the current directory.

To know more about how to use a command put the word man before a commmand such as:

$ man ls

This is called the manual page aka man page.

To navigate this window you can use the arrows up and down or navigate using the keyboard ala vim style.

Vim is a text editor that you can open within the Terminal. It has a big learning curve because you cannot use the mouse and only the keyboard.

If you want to navigate a man page using what I call is the vim style. Press the key J to go down and the key K to go up.

To quit this window just press the key q.

A command can have options denoted by a single dash - or two dashes --.

The two dashes are used for words and a single dash is used for single letters or numbers.

For example:

$ ls -a

Is the same as:

$ ls --all

If you look at the man page for ls you will see that ls -a is explained as “do not ignore entries starting with .” (…with a period)

Files that start with a period are hidden files.

Just like in Windows and Mac, some files are hidden from a folder. To view them you have to change the folder settings.

Change directory

$ cd

This one has to be used with a parameter. If you want to move up or down a directory tree structure you have to use a special character.

Let’s say that I am in this directory:

$ pwd
/home/tom/Documents/sandbox

If I type this:

$ ls
pictures

It shows there is another directory called pictures.

To change to that directory I need to do this:

$ cd pictures
$ pwd
/home/tom/Documents/sandbox/pictures

To go to the previous directory:

$ cd ..

To see where you are:

$ pwd

And the output is:

/home/tom/Documents/sandbox

To go to your home directory:

$ cd

That is with no paremeters. Check where you are:

$pwd
/home/tom

Clear the screen

As you type many commands you want to go back to the top.

$ clear

Or you can also use Ctrl+L.

Create a directory

$ mkdir name-of-directory

Let’s see where we are:

$ pwd
/home/tom/Documents/sandbox

Let’s create a directory called videos

$ mkdir videos

List contents:

$ ls
pictures  videos

Change the name of a directory

I want to change of a directory from videos to data.

$ mv videos/ data

The formula is from old name to new name.

$ ls
data  pictures

Create a file inside data

I want to create a new csv file inside the data directory.

$ cd data/ && touch emails.csv

The characters && are used like this:

Run B only if A works

A && B

The touch command is used to create a file.

Let’s see where we are:

$ pwd
/home/tom/Documents/sandbox

List the contents:

$ ls
data  pictures

Let’s run that command:

$ cd data/ && touch emails.csv

Let’s see where we are now:

$ pwd
/home/tom/Documents/sandbox/data

List the contents:

$ ls
emails.csv

List of computer processes

To see all the processes running in your computer you can use the Task Manager. In Mac you can use the Activity Monitor.

For Linux you can use the following:

$ top

This will show all the processes running in real time.

To take a snapshot of the processes use:

$ ps aux

Input and Output

Whenever you type a command and it gives you a result on the screen, this is called the “standard output” aka stdout.

You can also redirect this output to a file.

The input is called the “standard input” aka stdin.

Let’s see where we are:

$ pwd
/home/tom/Documents/sandbox/data

The second line above is displayed on the stdout of the Terminal.

I want this result to be sent to a file called working_directory.txt

$ pwd > working_directory.txt

When you hit Enter. It will not show any result.

List the contents:

$ ls
emails.csv  working_directory.txt

Add to a file

What happened?

Using the greater than sign. Sent the output to a new file called working_directory.txt.

The way it works is that if such file doesn’t exist. Then create the file.

If you open this file, it will have this content:

/home/tom/Documents/sandbox/data

The greater than sign adds to a file. But if you use it again on the same file it will replace the contents.

$ ls > working_directory.txt

If you hit Enter here it will not send the result to stdout.

If you open the file again you will see that the content has been replaced:

emails.csv
working_directory.txt

I used ls to list the contents of the current directory and sent this output to the file working_directory.txt.

Append to a file

If you don’t want to overwrite the contents of a file using redirection. You should use two greater than signs such as:

$ ls >> working_directory.txt

Since the file previously had this:

emails.csv
working_directory.txt

Running such command will result in this content:

emails.csv
working_directory.txt
emails.csv
working_directory.txt

It appended to the end of the file.

Redirection with Pipe |

You can also redirect the output of one command to the input of another.

Previously we saw how to get a snapshot of processes:

$ ps aux

But this shows a long list. To show fewer results you can use the less or more commands.

Run this command:

$ ps aux | less

It will show the results in a way that you can navigate up and down either using the arrows or the “vim way” with J and K.

The pipe is used to sent the output of ps aux to the input of less.

Send the contents of a file to stdout

$ cat working_directory.txt

The cat concatenates a file and prints to stdout. What this means is that it opens the file and sends the content to the standard output.

Add contents with echo

Let’s see where we are:

$ pwd
/home/tom/Documents/sandbox/data

List the contents:

$ ls
emails.csv  working_directory.txt

Open the file emails.csv with Sublime.

Add this content:

first,last,email
elon,musk,elon@tesla.com
tim,cook,tim@apple.com

Save and close the file. Then go back to the terminal.

Let’s add another row to this file like this:

$ echo "homer,simpson,homer@aol.com" >> emails.csv

Use cat to show the content of emails.csv in stdout.

$ cat emails.csv
first,last,email
elon,musk,elon@tesla.com
tim,cook,tim@apple.com
homer,simpson,homer@aol.com

Count the number of lines

Open the man page of the command wc.

Using the option -l (dash lowercase L). It prints the number of lines.

Let’s use a combination of previous commands:

$ cat emails.csv | wc -l
4

I used cat emails.csv to open the file. Used the | pipe to send the output of that to the input of wc -l which is used to count the lines. In this case four lines.