Introduction to Linux and Basic Linux Commands for Beginners

Hello and welcome to Soy Tech in today's video .

I will give you guys a quick introduction to Linux and I'm going to show you how to use some very useful introductory Linux commands using a terminal window .

Now , just to be clear , this is a course for beginners who want to learn how to use commands on a Linux terminal .

Now , for those of you guys who are not familiar with Linux at all , let's give you a quick perspective .

Linux is not UNIX .

UNIX was created by a bunch of at and T employees in 1969 .

Linux was written by a name by a guy named Linus Trod who created the entire thing by himself and released it around 1991 .

Now , Linux is a powerful operating system , but it is especially designed for server systems and 90% of the world's fastest computers like supercomputers run on some form of Linux .

And this is because it's a rock solid system .

OK ?

So that was a quick history on Linux that was just to give you a perspective .

Now , Linux and UNIX are different .

Just remember that .

Now , one more thing before we dive in Linux comes in many different varieties which are called diss or distributions .

In this tutorial , we will use the popular U Bantu distribution of Linux , but there are others out there as well such as Fedora Mint and Debian and more even Android is a Linux distribution .

So the basic commands , we will , we will be running and learning today can be generally used on almost all different Linux distributions .

All right .

So let me go ahead and launch Linux .

And I just want to let you know I'm running Linux on my windows .

So what you do is you install virtual box , which is right here .

So let me launch that and inside a virtual box , you can install any operating system possible .

So I have put Utu Linux inside a virtual box on my Windows seven machine .

OK ?

So let me run this up .

And I just want to let you know , you can actually find a link in the description below which tells you how to uh install virtual box and Linux on , on your Windows seven if you want to go ahead and do that .

But this is the Utu Linux that is launching right now .

OK ?

So here you're looking at ubuntu Linux .

And uh before we dive into the commands , I'm gonna show you something real quick what you're seeing here , all these icons , all this desktop , all these nice graphical features .

This is called the G U I .

This is called the graphical user interface .

Now we are not worried about that today .

What we're worried worried about is the cli which is called the command line interface .

So you have to launch a terminal to go into the command line interface .

And then once you um search for an app , you can type in terminal which brings up the terminal right here and then you can actually click that and that is the terminal we will be working with .

All right .

So the first command we will be looking at today is the P W D command .

Oops , that's not typing .

OK , P W D command , P W D D command stands for print working directory .

So when I press enter , it actually tells me which directory I am currently located at .

So if I go to my uh folder browser , um I am actually in home .

So which is right here .

So I'm looking at all these guys on my command prompt .

Now , the second command I wanna show you guys is the L S command .

When you press L S , it gives you a listing of everything which is in the current directory .

So the current directory is the directory , which is my user name and we're under home inside of home .

I've got all these guys .

So I've got the desktop downloads , music , public videos .

And if you come over here , that's all the same stuff you're going to see in a regular file explorer .

So here's a desktop documents downloads , music , same stuff that you see here .

So that is the L S command .

It's , it's , it , it stands for list and when you list it lists whatever is inside of your current directory .

Again , P W D stands for print working directory .

So it tells you where you are currently located in .

Now , as you can see when you have a pretty graphical user interface , you can see everything right in front of you .

But if you have a command line interface like this on a terminal , you're not going to be able to see anything .

So if I clear this , that's all you see .

So you have no idea where you are .

OK ?

So to see where you are P W D to see what you have at where you are , you type in list .

Now , the next command I'm gonna show you is called the CD command and CD command has a lot of variations .

CD is used for navigation .

So let's say I want to go to the uh downloads folder .

How do I go there ?

I type in CD and I type in downloads the name of the folder and just remember everything has to be exactly as it appears .

So the , the , the in , in Linux everything is case sensitive .

So this cannot be a uh um a small D , it has to be capitalized just like it is here .

OK ?

So if I type in CD downloads now , I am in the downloads folder .

Ok .

And how do I know ?

I'm in downloads folder .

P W D .

It actually tells you right here .

So I'm in home slash Saki slash downloads .

Ok .

And let's see what we have in downloads right now .

Type in list and there's nothing in downloads .

So let's , uh , launch this again .

Go to downloads .

And as you can see , downloads directory is actually empty .

Ok .

So if it is empty you're not going to see anything here .

Now , let's say I want to go back to my home directory , my soy directory .

How do I go back ?

So CD takes you into a folder and if you want to go out , what you do is you type in CD space two dots and that takes you back to the previous directory that you were focused on .

Now , if you want to go to the root directory , which is like um in , in windows , it's like the C directory , what you type is CD forward slash , make sure you put the space .

Ok ?

So CD , space forward slash press enter and that's gonna take you to the root directory .

Let's type in L S and as you can see the root directory has much more then your user directory .

Ok .

Again , but home and Saki is inside of root , root is at the top of everything .

So if you look around carefully , you'll see the home directory sitting in the root directory .

And if you go in there CD home and you type in L S , you will see your user name .

OK ?

And then CD Saki and then you type in L S and now you're back over here , this and this match .

So remember this will take you to the root of your Linux operating system and inside of root , you've got all kinds of fancy things that you don't want to worry about right now .

So let's do a quick recap .

Let's go to the musics folder , CD , music .

So I'm now in the musics folder or the directory .

I'm going to be using the word folder and directory interchangeably interchangeably and they're going to be , be meaning the same exact thing .

Ok ?

So in here , let's type in P W D .

So that means print , print working directory and it tells you that you are in fact focused on the music folder .

Again .

If you go over here , here's the music folder .

If you go to home , here's the music folder .

Ok .

It's empty .

Let's type in L S to see if it is really empty .

It is in fact empty .

So next , I'm gonna show you how to copy or move a file .

So let's go back CD space dot dot takes us back and do an L S and let's say I want to go into the documents folder .

So I type in CD documents and then type in L S and here what I have is I have a test file .

So this is one of the files .

What I want to do .

What I want to do is I want to copy this file and I'm going to use the C P command for that .

That stands for a copy .

I'm gonna copy this test file and I'm going to paste it into the same folder with a different name .

So test copy and I'm going to press enter , OK ?

Just to give you , make you understand exactly what happens .

So you use the copy command , you pick the file that you're trying to copy and then you give it a brand new name to create the copy within the same folder .

OK ?

So if I type in L S now you have the first file test and then you've got test copy .

Now , how do I remove this file ?

You use the R M command .

OK ?

So the R M command is used to delete a file in your current folder .

So if you type in R M test copy and you type in L S , as you can see , test copy is gone and we only have test left over .

Now , what if I want to copy , test file ?

And I want to paste it into the downloads folder ?

How do you do that ?

OK .

What you got to do is you have to type in C P and you take the test file and then you have to tell the computer where do you want to put the copy of the test file .

So remember if you go up here , we're working under home slash Saki .

Ok .

So what you wanna do is you wanna do slash home slash slash downloads and you press enter and type in L S , we still have the test file right here .

Now , let's go back CD dot dot type in L S and let's navigate to the downloads folder .

And if I type in L S here , now we've got the , the file test sitting here which we copied over from the documents folder .

So let's go ahead and remove this file from the downloads folder .

So R M is the remove command R M test .

And remember because we are focused into downloads .

When we do R M test , it's gonna do , it's gonna delete the test file only from the downloads folder because that is where we are focused on press , enter type in list one more time L s and now there's nothing there left .

So let's go back , let's just type in P W D and we're back in home .

So next , next , let's talk about making a new folder and deleting the new folder .

So let me launch this right here and I'm going to minimize , I'm make this a little thinner here .

Ok ?

So you can still see what's going on one second .

All right .

So that's better .

So let's go to my , um my documents over here and let's go to CD documents .

Oops , documents .

Ok .

So now we're in the documents folder and all we have in here is the test file which you can see right here .

Let's make a new folder .

So how do you make a new folder ?

You use the command called M K D I R press enter and it's gonna say some kind of error because we were missing an operant .

Ok ?

So we were missing the new directory .

We use the command but we did not specify the name of the directory .

So you type in M K D D I R and then you type in test folder .

I'm gonna use capital letters here .

Ok ?

And as you can see over here , a test folder was created instantly and I can actually go into that test folder if I wanted to L S and there's nothing in there .

So let's go back CD dot dot And let's delete the test folder .

So how do you delete that ?

What you do is you use the , you use the command R MD I R .

So this one is make directory .

This one is remove directory type in test folder and I'm not going to press enter , take a look over here and let's come back here and press enter and that directory disappears .

Now , if the directory has something inside it , we cannot delete the directory that has stuff in it using R MD I R .

Ok .

So let's uh M K D I R make another directory in the documents folder and say test .

OK .

So it popped up right here and let's go inside here and let's just create a new document .

Ok .

New doc .

Now , if I try to delete this using R MD I R test folder , let's go back here .

Ok .

So now the test folder has a file in it .

It is the new doc .

OK ?

If I try to delete this , it's gonna say failed to remove test directory is not empty .

So how do you delete this ?

You have to actually use the R M command , which is a remove command for files .

But what you do is you have to set a new option .

You have to say minus R and then you have to type in test .

OK ?

So watch this .

There's still a fall in here , but it's just going to disappear .

OK ?

So everything in test has been removed .

So this is how you delete folders that have existing files inside of them .

You use the R M command , you put a space , you put a minus R and then you put a space and then you put the name of the directory right underneath uh right next to minus R .

OK ?

So here it's gotten really messy here .

So let's use the clear command to clear the screen real quick .

And I'm gonna talk about a couple other commands and we're gonna , and the tutorial here .

All right .

So the final command I want to go over is called the man command .

OK , ma N now this stands for manual manuals , OK ?

Like uh like tutorials .

So when you don't know what you're doing and you want to find out more about any command that you're using , you can type in man space and let's just say the L S command , which is the list command and you press enter , it's going to give you a whole lot of information regarding the L S command .

So you're going to get the name of the command , which is L S , it says list directory contents .

OK ?

You get a quick syna synopsis , you get a description of what the command exactly does and all that stuff .

And once you're done reading this whole thing , you just type key Q to quit .

OK ?

So let's do one more man .

And let's do the C P command , which is the copy command .

Press enter and it says here it copies files and directories .

OK ?

And you have a description here and you can read through this whole thing and you can keep pressing enter to get more information .

So press enter to continue .

OK ?

To go all the way .

But when you're done , you can press Q and it just quits the manual .

So that's how you can get information on any command that you want in Linux .

All right .

And thank you for watching this video .

Now , there are going to be more Linux tutorials coming soon .

So go ahead and subscribe to my channel for more videos to come .

Give me a thumbs up if you liked this video .

And you can also follow me on Facebook , Google Plus and Twitter .

Ok .

So we have all these options .

All links to my social media websites and my actual website are found in the description below .

All right .

Thanks for watching again and I'll see you the next time .