Command line basics
The command-line (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface) is the most powerful way to interact with a computer and, sometimes, the only one available. Of course it's not so complicated as the popular culture depicts.
- Command-line interface (CLI) - a kind of computer interface, as opposed to a graphical user interface (GUI).
- Terminal mode - an operating system video mode that just displays characters on the screen.
- Terminal emulator - a program that emulates the terminal mode inside a graphical environment.
-
Interactive shell - a CLI program that is executed first on a terminal and allows the user run other programs (ex.:
bash).
There is a set of commands and syntax patterns that is universal to any Unix-like environment, including Unix operating systems like Linux and macOS, and Cygwin or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows.
This online tutorial is a good start: https://linuxjourney.com/lesson/the-shell