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
    34·
    2 years 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.
      • vort3@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 years ago

        I might be wrong here, but “cd” without any arguments works as “cd -” for me.

  • DrOps@feddit.de
    11·
    2 years 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.

    • Ricaz@lemmy.ml
      2·
      2 years ago

      Instead of aliases, I just have lots of symlinks in my homedir.

      I do have .. and ... aliases though.

      Mostly if I’m gonna work with files I just use ranger, or FZF from my shell to find stuff.

      • Father_Redbeard@lemmy.mlOP
        1·
        2 years ago

        Ranger looks like how my brain wants to work. I’ll have to check that out. I like the idea of symlinks too.

  • inspxtr@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 years ago

    Others have mentioned using interactive tools like zoxide to easily get to frequently visited directories.

    In addition, I also use nnn (https://github.com/jarun/nnn), which is a terminal file manager that you can navigate through. You can create shortcuts, snippets and bookmarks with this. I use this and zoxide + fzf regularly on CLI to navigate.

    Some here also mention ranger, which is another terminal file manager. In my limited experience with ranger, I feel like the start up time is much slower than nnn; but I haven’t tried much. Tho with ranger + graphic-accelerated terminals like kitty, I believe you can preview images and files, which seems to be a great feature. So it depends on your need.

  • Presi300@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    Use the fish shell… No, seriously it’s autocomplete and tab functionality makes browsing directories through the terminal so much easier

  • ErnieBernie10@lemmy.world
    6·
    2 years ago

    Useful one I find is the z program you can install it with package manager and it’s also included with zsh shell. It’s basically like a smart cd command. Instead of having to type the entire path for cd, when using z you can just type the destination folder and if it’s in your history it will resolve the path by itself.

  • 257m@lemmy.ml
    6·
    2 years 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·
      2 years 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)"'
  • slembcke@lemmy.ml
    6·
    2 years ago

    There are a few directory structures I have memorized, like my programming projects for instance. For everything else, I use the GUI. That’s what it’s there for. Mixing and match to get the best of both worlds. Some handy tips:

    • xdg-open will act like clicking on a file in the GUI, and is an easy way to open folders from the terminal when you want to browse them.
    • Use sshfs or even just whatever is built into your desktop environment to connect to remote servers and browse them
    • Most terminals let you drag files or folders into them to paste their paths
  • jernej@lemmy.ml
    5·
    2 years 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

  • Euphoma@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    2 years 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.

    • Father_Redbeard@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      That’s where I’m at now. And it does work. But I knew there had to be something out in the wild that folks use to traverse or at least understand where they are better. I do like Tree for a more in depth ls though. I don’t recall the options you can throw at the end of tree off the top of my head but you can specify how many layers you want to go down to see a visual of the file structure.

      • Knusper@feddit.de
        4·
        2 years ago

        Problem with most tips and tricks is that they require customizations to the OS. Many people who use Linux in a more advanced fashion, tend to also use lots of different systems, e.g. because they’re a system administrator. And you don’t want to have to make customizations to every system just to be able to get around. So, you learn to work with the lowest common denominator (mostly POSIX commands).

        Many of us do still choose to make some customizations to our most used systems, but yeah, we try to keep it lightweight and mostly just utilize tools that aid in using the POSIX commands, not replace them.

  • wuphysics87@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 years 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

  • Magister@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    Just using “cd -” to go back where you were is useful.

    history command and ! and the number in history, like

    !123

    For instance, it’s useful