As much as I hate to do this, I feel that I need to learn the basics of the Ubuntu command line. I learn best from Videos and was wondering if there are some videos out there I can look at to learn from. I have been a GUI type person my entire computer life and make efforts to look for GUI solutions, but I know there are times I have to go into a terminal window.

Much appreciated!!

I wouldn't recommend videos -- not the best way to learn. You'll be better off doing some reading.

Ubuntu has put out this short guide: Linux Basics

As a much more detailed introductory tutorial, I would recommend the Rute Linux Tutorial.

I would also recommend learning some basic Bash scripting: Advanced Bash Scripting Guide

You could also look at the info pages for several common utilities that come with almost all modern Linux distributions. Type the following commands into your shell and browse through them (don't try to read everything all at once -- for just familiarize yourself with what's tools are available, so that when you need to figure out how to do something later, you know where to look):


info coreutils
info grep
info sed
info bash
info libc


This should be more than enough to get you started. Once you've familiarized yourself with a few basic tools, most of the learning will come from just figuring out how to do specific things. You'll learn little things here and there, which will quickly add up to a lot of knowledge.

--Jesse Taylor

Thanks jrtayloriv. I will check out those links.

In my case, videos really help me understand quickly. I have always learned faster by watching videos.

Videos are nice in some cases -- but in this case, there is really nothing to make a video about.

All you would be doing is watching someone type commands into a terminal. That is, you'd just be reading the commands on their screen. So you might as well just read the commands from a good book instead. It will be much faster.

This link doesn't work:

Ubuntu has put out this short guide: Linux Basics

Good point jrtayloriv. Never thought about it that way.

Sorry about that -- fixed it.

The only way to learn the command-line (terminal) interface is to "just do it". You can get a rolling start with something like the Bash Guide for Beginners---free at http://tldp.org .......but don't try to read too much before actually sitting down at a terminal---you will learn best by actually typing commands and seeing what happens.

Here is a linux distro based on ubuntu. Its called INX linux It is a livecd. It run only cli no X. It has some great tutorials that walk you through many things. Fron basics to more advanced commands. It is a great tool to learn the power of linux from the command line. Here is a link to there home page.

http://http://inx.maincontent.net/index.html

Hi,

Look at the 'Tutorial' section of 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

And...

You might find that this guide has a form and structure that suits you.

http://www.linux.org/lessons/

Thanks. I came across a book that I have had for a while called A Practical Guide To The Unix System by Mark G. Sobell. Do you think that this book might be of help to me as well? The book discusses the Korn, Bource and C shells but not the Bash shell.

Whats up dude?
Good distros for command line and fun

finnix-0.93
http://www.finnix.org/

grml-small/medium or big
zsh shell, + others
http://grml.org/

ttylinux
http://minimalinux.org/ttylinux/

slackware is another awesome distro requiring alot of cli stuff/configuring

Its actually best I believe to learn witin qemu/vbox, etc
that way you can give commands without fear of harming your real system

What a neat idea! I'll try that out.