I thought it would be useful to break away from all the GUI-goodness and offer up a few command line tips and tricks. Why? No matter how powerful, user-friendly, and modern the Linux desktop becomes, there may come a time when you want to step up your game and get down and dirty with the command line interface.

Today’s “Newbie Tip” is learning some basics about the “Command Line Interface” or as it’s mostly referred to, “Command Line”. The command line gives the user the ability to interact with the operating system by typing via a text terminal.

I love the command line. However, most people can’t just live on the command line, GUI’s can be pretty useful :P. I find myself spawning GUI programs from the command line a lot, and here are two tips which make doing that a pleasant experience:

In the last article I talked about simple command pipelines, one of the features that makes the Linux command line so powerful and so worth learning. So if you want to get comfortable using the command line, here are some tips that will make it a lot easier.

Anyone that has been reading these tips for any length of time knows that I am a command-line guy. It’s faster, more efficient, and more powerful. Sure, a nice GUI is great to look at, but to really get things done, give me the CLI any day. Even to this day I still use a text-mode e-mail client (Mutt) and text-mode IRC client (Irssi).

I am personally a strong advocate of using the Command Line. However, I am coming from a more tech type of situation than some others do. For the 'average" user however, is the Command Line relevant to everyday use?

I started learning computers back when DOS was all that was available to me, so I was comfortable with the command line. When Windows 95 was released my command line usage dropped considerably because there simply wasn't the "need" for it that there once was. I've gone from using the command line all the time to using it very seldom because GUI's were getting better and becoming more wide spread.

There is always a time when working with the CLI that you will want to find a set of files by name, such as all JPEG images. The `find` command lets you do this and more. Let’s jump into the basic structure of a find command:

This article is a continuation to my other Bash-related post, 6 Bash Productivity Tips. Since that article gathered many useful comments and I bumped into several more over the net, here are 5 more tips and tricks. Although these may not be necessarily productivity-related, they will surely ease working in a Bash terminal and it may be worth knowing them.