The terminal can look a little intimidating at first, but don’t worry - it’s simply a way to tell your computer what to do using text commands instead of a mouse. It’s fast, powerful, and once you learn a few basics, it becomes one of the most useful tools on your system.

Don’t be afraid to experiment - most commands are completely safe to try.

If something doesn’t work, the terminal will usually just return an error message, not break anything.

And remember: you can always **close the terminal window** or type `exit` to get out of a session.

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### About This Guide

This quick guide is designed to help new users get started with the terminal.

The terminal uses **keyboard input only**, and while commands can vary between operating systems, the examples below are for **Ubuntu’s GNOME Terminal**.

Most of these commands will also work on other Linux distributions - if they don’t, you can search for the equivalent ones for your specific distro.

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### Opening the Terminal

You can open the terminal in a couple of ways:

- Open the **GNOME Launcher** and search for **Terminal**.

- Or, on most Linux distributions, press **`Ctrl` + `Alt` + `T`** to open it directly.

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### Using the Tab Key

This might sound odd, but it’s one of the most common tips we give at Star Labs:

>

> **Tab is your friend.**

Pressing the `Tab` key auto-completes commands or filenames.

For example, if you type:

`do
`

and press `Tab`, you’ll see a list of all commands starting with “do”:

`do
done
dosfsck
domainname
do-release-upgrade
dosfslabel
`

If there’s only one match, `Tab` will complete it automatically.
For instance, typing `do-r` and pressing `Tab` becomes:

`do-release-upgrade
`

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### Navigating the File System

Learning how to move around your system is one of the first steps.

- Show your current directory:

`pwd
`

Example output:

`/home/star
`

- Change to another directory:

`cd Desktop
`

- Go back to the parent directory:

`cd ..
`

- List files and folders:

`ls
`

- Include hidden files:

`ls -a
`

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### Running Commands as Superuser

Some tasks (like installing software or updating the system) require **administrator permissions**.

To run a command with those permissions, use `sudo` before it.

- Run a command as superuser:

`sudo
`

- Install a program:

`sudo apt install program-name
`

- Update installed packages:

`sudo apt update
`

- Upgrade packages automatically:

`sudo apt upgrade -y
`

- Upgrade packages and dependencies:

`sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
`

- Remove unused dependencies:

`sudo apt autoremove
`

- Search for installed programs by keyword:

`sudo apt list --installed | grep keyword
`

---

### Viewing and Editing Files

You can read or edit text files right from the terminal:

- View a file’s contents:

`cat filename
`

- Edit or create a file:

`nano filename`