I’ve just started my Linux journey earlier this year. As a goal to learn how to self-host applications and services that will allow me to take back some control of my data. Immich instead of Google Photos, for example.
I have a local server running Unraid and 22 docker containers now. And then a VPS (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS) running two apps. I’ve learned a ton but one thing I can’t seem to wrap my brain around is navigation through the file structure using only terminal. My crutch has been to open a SFTP session in Cyberduck to the same device I’m SSH’d to and try to figure things out that way. I know enough to change directories, make directories, using Tree to show the file structure at different levels of depth. But I feel like I’m missing some efficient way to find my way to files and folders I need to get to. Or are y’all just memorizing it and know where everything is by now?
I come from a Windows background and even then I sometimes catch myself checking via explorer where a directory is instead of using CMD or PowerShell to find it.
I’d love to hear any tips or tricks!
EDIT: I’ve been using Termius because they have a great Android client, but I wasn’t about to pay $5/mo for sync. Especially to sync to someone else’s cloud. Which led me to Tabby, which I understand has quite a large footprint resource-wise. But I guess I either don’t know enough yet to be mad about it or it hasn’t impacted any of my systems negatively yet. No Android client though, but you can bring your own sync solution and it has a handy little shortcut to SFTP to the current directory you’re in. Between that and stuff like ranger, it’s made it so much easier to learn my way around!
I just type ls everytime I cd into something. It’s not that efficient honestly but I usually remember where I want to go after going there a couple times. Also if you hit tab twice after typing cd and a space, it shows all of the files in the directory.
That’s where I’m at now. And it does work. But I knew there had to be something out in the wild that folks use to traverse or at least understand where they are better. I do like Tree for a more in depth
lsthough. I don’t recall the options you can throw at the end of tree off the top of my head but you can specify how many layers you want to go down to see a visual of the file structure.Problem with most tips and tricks is that they require customizations to the OS. Many people who use Linux in a more advanced fashion, tend to also use lots of different systems, e.g. because they’re a system administrator. And you don’t want to have to make customizations to every system just to be able to get around. So, you learn to work with the lowest common denominator (mostly POSIX commands).
Many of us do still choose to make some customizations to our most used systems, but yeah, we try to keep it lightweight and mostly just utilize tools that aid in using the POSIX commands, not replace them.
exa is a nice alternative to ls and tree commands. Just add an alias to them based on the views you want.
But like other comment points out avoid lots of customization if you work on various shared systems, esp SSHing in.
With my keyboard layout and other keybind customizations my system is pretty unusable to others except basic mouse on browser. Like wise i have trouble using others’ systems and need to setup any new installs to a precise way before able to work. Slightly regret going too much into customization in certain aspects.
Not sure if limited to certain emulators, alt+l should do that for you
I think pressing TAB sends Alt+I to the terminal so yeah.
Not following you.
Forgot a word sorry. I said pressing TAB or Alt+I are the same thing. But I was mistaken, it’s tab and Ctrl+I.
Not used to ctrl+i so thanks.