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!
Also make use of the up arrow on your keyboard, with which you can quickly reuse commands you have ran recently.
For example you search for a directory with
ls -alhin multiple steps, and when you have found the one you actually want to work in, then you once again press up, and either edit the command fromlstocdto switch to it, or just edit it to your favorite text editors command and put the file name at the end of the path. Tab helps with that too.Tab completion is done by the shell, not by the command you want to use, though worth mentioning that some tools install tab completion helpers your shell makes use of automatically.
I have been doing that, useful on Windows as well and I do that mess for my job now.
It does not work on all terminal but you can also your the beginning of a command then the up key. It will show you only the previous command that start the same way.