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!

    • 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.

  • tvcvt@lemmy.ml
    1·
    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.
  • 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