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!

  • tvcvt@lemmy.ml
    4·
    10 months ago

    I think it’s just a matter of getting used to it. I had the same issue at first and the more I used the command line, the more I started to prefer it to GUI apps for certain tasks.

    A couple things that I use all the time:

    • tab completion is incredible
    • cd - goes back to the last directory you were in (useful for bouncing back and forth between locations)
    • !$ means the last argument. So if you ls ~/Downloads and then decide you want to go there, you can cd !$.
    • :h removes the last piece of a path. So I can do vim /etc/network/interfaces and then cd !$:h will take me to /etc/network.
    • Bugamn@lemm.ee
      1·
      10 months ago

      Besides using !$, alt+. on bash copies the last argument into the line you are typing, which might be better if you want to edit it.

    • ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      !$ means the last argument. So if you ls ~/Downloads and then decide you want to go there, you can cd !$.

      Nice, I usually do !!:n. This is a lot better.

  • wuphysics87@lemmy.ml
    3·
    10 months ago

    I’m surprised I didn’t see fasd fasd (pronounced ‘fast’) uses ‘frecency’ (frequency + recently) in order to jump to or open your most frecent documents or directories. A dumber version is z which works as a supliment to cd

  • Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    10 months ago

    I find that zsh with plugins makes my life very easy. And if I need to quickly find something, fzf works wonders

  • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Something I haven’t seen mentioned here is Ctrl + R on the command line to quick-search history. You start typing/backspacing and it shows the most recent matching history entry. Press Ctrl + R or Ctrl + Shift + R to navigate up and down through matching entries. Press Enter to pick an entry, Ctrl + C to cancel.

    • Father_Redbeard@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      I saw that mentioned in another comment and I’ve been testing it out while I try to get Cryptpad installed on my VPS and its very nice!

    • CoderKat@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Also, if OP is new, they may not yet be aware of aliases and functions. Generally you’d out those in a ~/.bashrc file that gets automatically executed when a terminal starts. They’ll allow you to save a more complex command as a really simple one. And particularly can be useful when things you want to run are in unusual directories. Eg, maybe you have a git repo somewhere that contains some project you spend most of your time on, so you could have an alias that just cd’s you to it’s directory. Git also has its own way of doing aliases and that’s really nifty for the more complicated git commands (or the more commonly used, like st for status).

  • DrOps@feddit.de
    1·
    10 months ago

    I did 4 things, that helped me a lot:

    1. Make aliases for the most visited directories

    alias cem=’cd /home/drops/.config/emacs’

    1. Make aliases for moving up the tree tree:

    alias. .=’cd. . && ls’

    Three points for two levels up, etc…

    1. Name all directories lowercase, 3-5 letters long, and try to avoid directories with the same starting letter as siblings That way you can use tab completion with just a single letter

    2. Use the option to jump to subdirectories of /home/user from everywhere.

    • Dandroid@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      10 months ago

      Instead of aliases, I use variables that I set in my .bashrc.

      For example, on WSL I have export WINDOWS_HOME=/mnt/c/Users/username. Then I can just cd $WINDOWS_HOME. Or cp $WINDOWS_HOME/Downloads/some_file .

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
    1·
    10 months ago

    Not strictly file browsing advice, but you can quickly search for previously issued commands by hitting ctrl-r and starting to type. (and you can press it again to search further back)

  • orizuru@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    10 months ago

    • ls / cd for basic stuff

    • fzf if I want to find my way through the history

    • broot if I want to search for a file

    • ripgrep if I want to find a file with specific contents.

    I know that the last 3 are not available by default, but they are good pieces of software, so I’m just going to install them.

    • SnachBarr@lemm.ee
      1·
      10 months ago

      Why use a separate command when “cd -“ works just fine to take you to the previous directory

      • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        10 months ago
        cd a
cd b
cd c
popd
popd
// you're now in "a"

        cd a
cd b
cd c
cd -
cd -
// you're now in "c" and need to manually cd to "a"
        • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          10 months ago

          You mean

          cd a
pushd b
pushed c
popd
popd

          Right ?

          Depending on your shell, pushd/popd might not be an option. For a similar functionality, I like to use a subshell which is portable across all shells:

          cd a
$SHELL
cd b
cd c
# do work here
^D
# you're back in "a"
    • Father_Redbeard@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      Um…no. I’ll admit I didn’t know that was an option. Weirdly I do it all the time in PowerShell. Though I am using Termius right now and at least on Android it doesn’t support tab auto complete. That said, it does auto suggest as you type to get you in the ballpark. I’ll have to try it again from my PC once I get my office put back together.

  • 257m@lemmy.ml
    1·
    10 months ago

    For navigating files quickly fzf is pretty much crucial to my workflow. Being able to get my home directory to the directory of the project I want to work on in two seconds flat is such a nice feeling after manually typing the path in for months. https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

    • furikuri@programming.dev
      1·
      10 months ago

      Agreed, fzf (and similar fuzzy finders) have been a game-changer with regards to the way in which I navigate the shell. Add in a couple of one-liners and I’m never more than a second away from any nested directory

      Here are some of the most used aliases in my configs if anyone would like to try it out

      Note that they use fd and exa but they can easily be swapped out for find and ls if those aren’t available on your system (which would allow for shorter aliases since they’re the fzf defaults IIRC)

      alias update-cdd='fd -Ha -td -d1 -E "\.config" -E "\.local" "^\." ~ > ~/.cddignore'

alias cdd='cd "$(fd -H -td --ignore-file ~/.cddignore . ~ | fzf --preview "exa -lF --no-permissions {}" --tiebreak=length,end,begin --preview-window=up,20%)"'

alias cdf='cd "$(fd -H -tf --ignore-file ~/.cddignore . ~ | fzf --preview "bat --style=header-filename,header-filesize -r 40: --color=always {}" --tiebreak=length,end,begin --preview-window=up,20% | xargs dirname)"'
  • jernej@lemmy.ml
    0·
    10 months ago

    I use ls and ranger, to find files i use find -name and remember that * is used as a wildcard so you can use it when searching for stuff with in incomplete filename or when copying or moving files/directories. You could also use colorls to add some flare to your ls, and oh-my-zsh for syntax highlighting and tab autocomplete

    • nathris@lemmy.ca
      0·
      10 months ago

      I know there is probably a historical reason but I hate how find parses its arguments.

      Any other app would be fine --name or find -n.

      Every time I use it I have to spend a few minutes checking the results to make sure that it’s actually doing what I want it to do.

      • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
        0·
        10 months ago

        Also every other search program has the needle as a positional argument and either reserves a named parameter to specify haystack, or has the haystack come after.

        Apparently the find devs thought users would spend more time using it as an alternative to ls -a than finding specific files

  • Euphoma@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    0·
    10 months ago

    Take some bash tutorials on the internet there are loads of them

    Learn rsync, it’s the best!

    I’ve been a 20 year Linux desktop and server user. I spent my time either in an IDE for development, on a browser, or in shells. Last time I touched a graphical file manager has been years ago, if not decades. Cli shells are so so so so so much more efficient in getting shit done than GUI programs it’s not even funny.

    Welcome to the dark side, we have cookies!

    If you use Linux desktop (you should, it rocks, use KDE!) then install yakuake! It’s the friggin best awesome thing ever! F12 and 25 shells drop down on my screen. F12 and I got my browser back.

    • Father_Redbeard@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      I just finished buttoning up my new PC build and installed Linux on it, actually. Pop!_OS though because I like the layout and it’s very un-Windows-like which is what I was after. I’m excited to learn more!