Introduction to the Command Line

19.1. File Manipulation
19.1.1. List the Contents of a Directory
19.1.2. Copy
19.1.3. Move
19.1.4. Remove
19.1.5. Create a Directory
19.1.6. Change the Working Directory
19.2. Process Manipulation
19.2.1. Information on Processes
19.2.2. Controlling Processes
19.2.3. Mixing ps and kill: top
19.3. Commands Documentation
19.4. Further Reading

Even if using graphical applications is very comfortable and easy for most people, the command line is a very powerful interface to interact with your system. The shell's main asset is the number of existing utilities: there are thousands of them, and each utility is devoted to a particular task. We look at a very small number of these utilities hoping that you will feel more comfortable interacting with your system through the command line.

 Choose ToolsKonsole Terminal from the main menu to get a terminal window to have access to the command line. By default you will be “inside” your personal directory, named after your user name: /home/your_user_name.