The command line and you

Today's episode is a little different. Basically, I want to convince you that you can and should learn to engage with the command line on your computer. There are a lot of tools that are only accessed, or best accessed, through the command line. In a perfect world maybe this wouldn't be the case, but in the world we live in the command line unlocks a lot of the hidden potential for your computer, and I feel like it's almost essential in the "owning" of modern technology.

Here are the basics:

pwd - short for "print working directory"

Type this into the terminal and press enter. You'll see the full path to wherever you "are" right now on your computer.

ls - short for "list"

This will show the files, folders, and executables that are in your current working directory.

cd - short for "change directory"

If you just type cd nothing happens, you need to tell it where you want to go. A few examples:

cd .. go to the parent directory

cd foldername go to foldername

cd ~ go to your home directory

If you get lost in the command line or you want to do something you don't know how to do using the command line, try xdg-open . (note the trailing dot, that means "right here"). This should open the the current directory in your GUI file browser.

Check out this week's newsletter (I'll link it on Twitter) for a more in-depth guide.

Quick recommends

Here's the list of basic tools I start the episode off with.

DuckDuckGo for search.

BitWarden for password management.

Signal for messaging.

Refurbished enterprise SFF PCs for home server.

Fastmail for email. (Even cooler people are using Tutanota these days, but I haven't tried it personally)

Firefox + AdBlocker Ultimate for web browsing.