Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

I came to answer your question and say that when I started computing there was only the command line - there were no windows, effectively no graphics, and the only thing you could do was type commands.

But then you ask if there are tutorials, and that I can't help you with. Having said that, I tried this search:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=command+line+tutorial

and I got lots of hits, including these:

* http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/command-line/

* http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8170/best-windows-command...

* http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/cli.html

I'm not a beginner on the command line, so I can't assess how well they meet your needs.

The best way to learn is by doing and using it often.

Don't read, use it often!

There must be a strong reason to learn, and don't just learn for the sake of learning!

I have been using Linux daily, its around 5+ yrs. I play around with numerous VPS remote boxes and still I'm learning, but everyday getting better at it.

This way, it should only get better and better over time! The more you use in your daily workflows, the more you appreciate and understand the internals too.

And there are no other shortcuts to learn command line tools. Courses or short tutorials won't help much.

You have to involve command line tools in your daily workflow's. Its a long term process, so keep learning, improving and don't ever stop!

I started in DOS watching over my brother's shoulder. (There was no GUI back then.) I used to make batch files and such.

Eventually I grew to love bash. I am sure there are plenty of keyboard shortcuts I don't know, but I find using the command line to be quicker than any other form of communicating with the computer.

I use keyboard shortcuts in Firefox, and occasionally dream of an Awesome Bar that works like bash.

I also really like using the 'move-cursor-a-word-left/right' and 'move-cursor-to-end/beginning-of-line' and 'move-cursor-to-top/bottom-of-textarea' functions you can find in almost every GUI.

Finally, I use Spotlight to load all my applications: I hit cmd-space and then it's usually 1 key to load my most commonly used applications, and generally 3-4 in worst case.

My suggestion: use the Terminal for everything: Learn to edit text files in emacs or vi, use a command line SQL browser, do source control from the command line, and learn sed, awk, and cut (plenty of tutorials out there). Use the keyboard in the browser and in GUI textareas as much as possible.

Here is a neat site which has turned up in a few of my Google searches: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse

Finally, shameless self-plug, I have been using this simple piece of code every day for a couple of years, a command-line (tab-completed) notebook for bash: https://github.com/nchelluri/notes .

HTH.

Edit: I keep looking at this page every few months, but it never seems to be compatible with my version of Firefox: http://paulrouget.com/e/jsterm/ :(

$ man man # best way to start

I could also recommend TUPE[1], it teaches you how to effectively use the command line and write shell scripts.

1. The Unix Programming Environment by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike.

I dont know about other people, but I learned based upon need. I needed to be able to manage files so I learned cd,mv,cp,ls. Then I needed to write the output to files so I learned about piping and the redirect operator. Then I needed to search through the output so I learned grep, etc.

I was on a gigantic Sequent machine with hundreds of users at UIUC.

When I got my account, I given a user agreement paper with rules and regulations that, at the very bottom, had a dozen or so commands on it. There were some very terse and cryptic descriptions. ("cd: change directory; man: read a manual page; ps: print running processes; grep: search for a string")

Eventually I bootstrapped my way up to doing "ps -augx" to see what other people were running. Then I would try whatever they were doing.

I can say how I started:

In 1997, a friend of mine came to visit, installed Debian 2.0 on my 486 with a unsupported Intel i740 videocard, showed me how to log in, 'man -k <something>' and 'man man', then said "See ya next week, have fun". And I had.

Once upon a time (c. 1990-1997), most programs were written for DOS, and some amount of command line knowledge was required to run them.

Installers were typically batch files (the DOS equivalent of shell scripts), which was really cool: You could see exactly what they were doing [1], and you could improve your command-line-fu by seeing the techniques people used [2].

[1] Usually it was just copying the application files from directory to directory. Nowadays installers generally muck with the Registry, C:\Progra~1 [3], C:\Users\Applic~1 [3], the Desktop (who knows where that is), the Start Menu, and the Windows equivalent of /etc/init.d (I remember there are several of them, and your system will get slower...and...slow...er...if you don't clean them out regularly)

[2] Like environment variables or @ECHO OFF.

[3] Spaces in filenames need to die. Whenever possible I use the 8-character names Windows generates for backwards compatibility with DOS.

Know how to get help with specific topics.

(1) At the terminal, via

    man <command>

or

    apropos <command>

and (2) online by googling.

These are useful when you have a specific task you want to get done, not so much otherwise. Therefore,

(3) Try to do things at the command line that you would normally do via mouse. If you have no idea how, google or 'apropos'. If you learn of a tool and have no idea how to use it, google more or 'man'.

(3a) Do the simple stuff via the CLI--removing and moving files, examining directory contents, et cetera. (Be careful with rm! It will not warn you by default.)

(3b) More complex stuff too--try editing text with a terminal editor. Many people swear by emacs and vim. They have learning curves of their own but they are worth it. Pick one.

(4) Pipes and input redirection. Send the output of one command as the input to another, send the output to a file, etc. This is where your standard Unix shell gets really powerful.

Peepcode has a great set of quality, affordable, screencasts. I went through them both and they helped a ton.

https://peepcode.com/products/meet-the-command-line

https://peepcode.com/products/advanced-command-line

Experimentation is another good option, and goes a long way, but it can be scary. If you're at all worried about doing permanent damage, install a virtual machine (i.e. VirtualBox + the server version of Ubuntu or whatever OS you want). That way you can experiment away without fear of doing permanent damage. If it happens just trash the the VM and start again.

I think that in order to learn the command line, you have to immediately develop a different goal that requires proficient use of the command line. That way it'll force you to learn by doing.

Command line is not one of those self-contained "deep" knowledge bases where everything links together. It's broad, shallow, unlinked - the concepts and practices do not always imply themselves. For bodies of knowledge that fit that pattern, you have to learn by doing - you can't simply derive the knowledge through study and thought. And the best way to learn by doing is to immediately apply it to something useful.

The greatest obstacle for me was knowing which tools did what. Many things I wanted to do in the shell I did not know were possible, and even Google is of limited value when your query is necessarily vague, though this has gotten a whole lot better in recent years.

Have an IRC connection to Freenode open so you can ask about these sorts of things that are more easily understood by humans (#bash, ##linux, ##workingset are good channels to be in). If you're really lucky, you have some knowledgeable mentor around who doesn't mind you asking them about the best way to perform some task (I was not so blessed).

I didn't really learn or rely upon much of the command line until I went through the process of installing Gentoo Linux[1] from a minimal CD.

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/

My Windows laptop was outta commission for a few weeks in college. I could use the public computer labs to do my homework, but the only way I could do any programming was to SSH into remote UNIX boxes that I had access to and write the code directly on the server. (I was doing mostly PHP development at the time, and had laboriously setup PHP/Apache/MySQL on my Windows box until it died.) When your only window into the world is an SSH terminal, you pick up the command line and vim fairly quickly.

My solution isn't the easiest because it requires a lot of discipline but it you force yourself to stick to it you will come to dominate the command line.

Everytime I wanted to do something in the command line as well as everytime I had to do something in it, I would then write down what the command was in a text file as well as my understand of what the command did.

If you program a keyboard shortcut to launch the text file with but one keystroke it's a not as bad as it sounds.

The reason I did this was because I would always enter a command and totally forget it and then need to look it up again and so I forced myself to stop wasting time by compiling my own command line glossary.

If you are new to UNIX, don't go poking around the MAN pages because you'll be lost, discouraged and less likely to acheive your goal of terminal excellency.

It's really not something you can just pickup overnight unless you're very very diligent and proficient with another language and very familiar with all things computers. If you can take a Unix course some where in person, do that. always the best to have a pro help you out while you're starting.

And one last point of particular importance. Respect the Sudo. I can't tell you how much frustration I endured while messing with the sudo--it's not a good thing to be bushwhacking no the command like as the root user which I did at first because I am just a curious kid and didn't know any better.

My advice is to abstain from messing with things like the ACL, file ownership, and the wheel group until you know the hierarchy cold.

The first computer my family owned was an IBM PC XT, which was my introduction to the concept of a command line interface being normal. I do wonder what it'll be like for the generation of potential hacker types who won't even remember a world before slick iOS UIs and ubiquitous internet in your pocket. Computers were a kind of source of wonder for me in my childhood, and what I see from young children today is they view them as very mundane, which I suspect hurts their curiosity.

Years detached from those experiences with the XT, I picked up Linux in the late 90s. It was a bit of a learning curve from DOS. But I picked up some very dated book at the local library about Unix and it kind of set me straight.

The real revolution in my thinking came in 2001, when I was unfortunate enough to buy a motherboard with an ALI 1647 chipset (it's sad that I have brain cells devoted to remembering that model number). That chipset, when combined with an NVIDIA video card, would make X crash and lock up after about 30 minutes of use (before you start bashing on Linux, I'd been told the same thing would happen on Windows with this hardware combination). For six months months I was in denial of this problem. I kept thinking the next BIOS update or the next driver would fix the problem. In the meantime I used nothing but console mode, because it was the only thing that was stable.

Six months or so later I sold the old motherboard, paid my quarter to get myself a "real motherboard" (ok, it was more like USD$200), and got X working again. It was good and all to have a GUI again but one thing I did notice was that my command line skills were much improved.

In 1995, all we had at university had was a bunch of SunOS & HP-UX workstations. Yes, they had X, mwm and (later) CDE, but you just had to learn the command line to do anything particularly useful. Man pages, a few of the IT service's leaflets (How to use troff/LaTeX), searching the web (Altavista! Dogpile! Webcrawler!) and asking in Usenet groups when I hit a real roadblock. I started building small shell scripts out of need to automate some things, and learned about the shell environment and the overall Unix philosophy doing that.

This was over a period of years rather than weeks or months - I probably can't say that I was proficient on the CLI until around 1999 when I really started getting stuck into Linux and building everything from scratch. I find that young developers today expect to learn everything immediately, expecting a one-true-way to wisdom, rather than accepting that true mastery seeps in over time, largely through doing and getting things wrong. So, experiment, and don't give up when you can't figure out something immediately.

> Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

I had no choice -- for most of my computing career, there wasn't anything else. in fact, when I first got into computing, I would have sold my left arm to gain access to a command line interface.

When I see a typical modern command line (a shell session), it's enclosed in a separate window, and I'm reminded how far we've come in a short time.

Before I had access to a terminal, I was writing programs anyway --

http://arachnoid.com/programmable_calculators

-- and my first terminal's output (while working for NASA in the early 1970s) was a roll of paper.

So that's my answer -- I had no choice.

Oh, p.s., here's my Bash tutorial:

http://arachnoid.com/linux/shell_programming.html

What is it you want to do? Just learn or do something with it? You won't learn something like that by reading. You have to actually use a terminal to accomplish things. Often.

Start using linux and develop something. You'll use about 3 terminal instances all the time. That's the way to learn.

Like others here, I learned simply by doing and fumbling my way around until I was comfortable.

That said, I think the most important thing for you to learn is how to get help. Learn how to find man(ual) pages, and how to interpret the very precise language and syntax that programmer-authors like to use. Then try reading the man pages of the systems that you want to learn - like 'man bash'. Also, some tools have nicer pages accessible via the 'info' command, so try 'info emacs'.

That'll generally be the best way to learn how to use any tool. The only trick past that is to learn which tools exist, and google/stackoverflow will usually suggest appropriate tools when you tell it precisely which problem you want to solve.

I cut my Linux teeth on Gentoo stage 1 and 2 installs, which I found enormously frustrating and equally educational.

Today, I'd recommend working through Linux From Scratch. You'll develop a rich understanding of how a UNIX-like OS fits together, including a fair bit of shell functionality: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/

My favourite dead-tree UNIX book would be UNIX Power Tools, 3rd Edition (http://www.amazon.com/Power-Tools-Third-Shelley-Powers/dp/05...). It may be a while before it's a truly valuable resource, but keep it in mind.

Download linux on your computer(Mint or Ubuntu id recommend). Then look up the basic commands and use them (ls, cd ...). Then move on to making your own aliases(search up 'making bash aliases'). By this point you can now start trying some more advanced things like having aliases which start up programs and open your project folders(search up 'dotfiles bash'). Lastly learning some shell script can help you better understand and utilize the terminal(as you can write complex shell scripts for your aliases). As a side note using vim(or emacs) as your default text editor will keep you in the terminal longer helping you get used to using it.

I learned Unix on my dad's Tandy Model 16 machine -- one of the first commercially available Unix micros (along with the Sun Workstation).

XENIX (Microsoft's Unix) came with a program called "learn" which was a tutorial. It would show you how to do something, then give you a goal and drop you into a mock shell. Most of the commands had their usual effects inside the mock shell, but you could always quit the lesson and restart if you screwed up.

That's how I picked up the basics. When I discovered Unix machines -- and Linux -- on my university campus some eleven years later, all the old skills translated and I learned some new ones along the way.

I learned the command line by using the command line. When I switched to Arch Linux, using bash was inevitable. It took many Google queries and reading many man pages to finally become comfortable in it.

When I was 16, I got my first VPS box. The hoster only offered SSH connection, so the shell was the only way to proceed. Spent half a year without knowing about '&' and 'nohup' and 'Ctrl-Z', but learned what patience actually is. Then watched the video course on Vim by Derek Wyatt.

There's a small book about shell by Zed Shaw, recommended: http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/

If you're new, start here: http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/

I think I first got into it when I was trying to get some sort of video to play in QuickTime - since then I've switched to VLC, cause I didn't have much luck.

Then I started doing Learn Python the Hard Way, which taught me the easy stuff like ls, cd, rm, and so on. Then I had a course in Linux Systems Administration, where I had no choice but to master it as fast as possible.

I bought a couple of Sam's Teach Yourself books:

-Sam's Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours

-Sam's Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours

These won't make you a shell genius immediately, but they'll create a good basis for future, specialized learning.

Also, I try not to be a material snob, but buying the book instead of using a website or .pdf file made a world of a difference (especially during a morning commute).

I seem to be one of the few people to have learned from a class. Over a semester, I learned all the important commands, and commands I probably have otherwise learned, like uniq -c, dmesg, or cut (although I can't imagine ever actually using awk), as well as the bash scripting language and syntax.

How did _I_ learn the command line?

By doing. Some reading, sure, but .. more doing than thinking. Like this;

I was a brand-new programmer (COBOL). The Marines assigned me to a billet in the LAN team at my new command. A corporal wrote down exactly what to type on the computer after the NIC was installed.

After that, I was off and running.

I learned mostly thru trial and error with Linux as a teenager, but during my CS degree this course filled in some missing gaps:http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/2005/UnixTools/

must have been 1999/2000. My boss made me, the ultimate noob, the "administrator" of a Solaris Box.

I didn't know SHIT! absolutely NOTHING. I was just a dumb Windows User. There was just this blinking cursor (that motherfucker) and me. i browsed the web and had to look up stuff like "cd" and "ls". Steep learning curve, i guess, but nothing teaches you better than "trial and error".

Funny sidenote: Not only was i totally overwhelmed with all the commands and quirks of the command line, but the web always mentioned vim as THE editor for Unix. So i also started messing around with the most obscure editor on this planet.

These were rough times for me, but i have learned so much, and i am thankful for that.

I am not a command line pro either but whatever limited experience i have came from working from mercurial and from college unix lectures. I would suggest you incorporate command line in some of your routine work (source control for example).

I learned from commands written on chalk boards in computer labs (during the days when all over campus were rooms of green or amber screened terminals that were open 24 hours).

Then one day I saw and typed 'man man'

'apropos' was also written on the board that day

Find a mentor or an irc chatroom. My sophomore roommate knew a ton. I annoyed him to no end w/ questions (many RTFM comments…). A lot of the commands aren't named obviously, though the 'apropos' command may help.

This is a good book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/013308504X/ref=oh_details_o...

I started with DOS 4.01, and a DOS manual. I went command by command, until I got to format "hey, we have a lot of files, it would be nice to have them formatted..."

That day I learned about OS installation as well.

And then continued.

thanks to HN who provide me this[1] link . It is awesome and contain many useful information . [1]:http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml

Ultimately, the best and proper way to be a console master is to install a Unix distribution on your one and only everyday machine and avoid any sorts of X or Window manager at all.

Seriously use it or lose it, it's really that simple when you don't know what you need to do just check out the man pages or,google your little heart out.

Found this on HN - excellent starting point / read: http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php

The hard slow way over the course of a few years. If I did it over again I'd buy books on bash, grep, sed, etc and learn it in one shot.

I remember at age five being taught by my dad how to run DOS games.

  Type 'cd ' and press tab. 'cd' is like clicking on a folder.

This xkcd cartoon on tar might be comforting: http://xkcd.com/1168/

I learnt by immersing myself in the command line - needing to get stuff done is the perfect catalyst.

Trying to get Wi-Fi to work on Ubuntu

> how did you learn the command line? I grew up with it

Everyone's assuming the poster means Linux, but he didn't actually specify. Lots of things have command line interfaces. What command line are you actually talking about?

my way: life without file managers. ls, cp, mv, mkdir, rm, find, grep... and vim, vim, vim =)

Like everything else. Google.