Moving around

In the terminal, there aren’t any icons like a file manager. To move between folders, you type short commands.

Where am I?

You can see your current folder with the pwd command:

pwd

pwd stands for print working directory. “Directory” is just another word for folder. /home/obay is your home folder, where your Documents, Downloads and other folders are.

What’s in this folder?

ls
# Desktop  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures  Videos

ls lists the contents of the current folder.

If you want to see what’s inside another folder, you can type the path of the folder after ls:

ls Pictures
# cat.jpg  screenshots  wallpaper.png

How do I go to another folder?

cd changes directory:

cd Pictures
pwd

Some shortcuts:

cd ..     # go up one folder
cd ~      # go home (cd alone works too)
cd -      # go back to where you just were

Paths

A path is an address for a file or folder. There are 2 types.

An absolute path starts with / and works from anywhere. It’s the full address, starting from the very top of the system:

cd /home/obay/Pictures/screenshots

A relative path starts from the folder you’re in. If you’re already in /home/obay, these 2 do the same thing:

cd Pictures/screenshots
cd /home/obay/Pictures/screenshots

Symbols you’ll see in paths:

Symbol	Means
`/`	The very top of the system (or a separator between folder names)
`~`	Your home folder
`.`	The folder you’re in right now
`..`	The folder above this one

So ~/Downloads means “Downloads inside my home folder”, and ../Music means “go up one, then into Music”.

Quick check: you’re in /home/obay/Music. Where does cd ../Pictures take you?

/home/obay/Pictures. The .. goes up to /home/obay, then you go into Pictures from there.