How to access terminal in linux

How do I open a terminal? [duplicate]

I just got ubuntu running on my computer and now I am ready to write a program. but I can’t figure out how to open a command terminal. I guess I don’t know where to find which version I am running either. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

I was using a different version last week that had a nice little icon on the top of the screen that just launched it.

@Mik Hm, I think closing that one was a mistake. «What is a terminal» and «How to open a terminal» are two separate questions.

@EliahKagan Yes, but that is against the principals of Q&A. Questions should not be a FAQ. It does not follow that the questions «What is X» and «Where is X» should be consolidated.

@JacobJohanEdwards You may want to post on meta about this. I think you’re construing the appropriate scope of a question far more narrowly than is commonplace on Ask Ubuntu or any Stack Exchange site. But I’m just one person; you may be able to persuade the community at large otherwise.

2 Answers 2

• Open the Dash by clicking the Ubuntu icon in the upper-left, type «terminal», and select the Terminal application from the results that appear.
• Hit the keyboard shortcut Ctrl — Alt + T .

interestingly i tried searching for «prompt», «command prompt», «shell», and «bash» and of course none of those was useful.

There are a couple of methods:

• If you’re running Unity: open the dash, type terminal, hit Return .
• If you’re on the old style menus, Applications → Accessories → Terminal.
• Control + Alt + T .
• Alt + F2 , gnome-terminal , Return .
• For a TTY: Control + Alt + F1..7 .

If you’re using Ubuntu variants, you might need to substitute gnome-terminal for xfce4-terminal , konsole or if you’ve gone off-piste, terminator (my fav) or if you’re running out of options, xterm . There are others — many, many others — but I doubt you’ll ever find them on a *buntu default install.

The TTYs are your last, best hope if you desperately need some form of terminal. Just be aware that they’re not conscious of the graphical environment so if you want to launch something graphical from one, you’ll need to run export DISPLAY=:0 first. Or adapt that if you’re running more than one X display.

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What is a terminal and how do I open and use it?

The terminal is an interface in which you can type and execute text based commands.

Why use it:

It can be much faster to complete some tasks using a Terminal than with graphical applications and menus. Another benefit is allowing access to many more commands and scripts.

A common terminal task of installing an application can be achieved within a single command, compared to navigating through the Software Centre or Synaptic Manager.

For example the following would install Deluge bittorrent client:

sudo apt-get install deluge 

To save a detailed list of files in the current directory tree to a file called listing.txt :

Sometimes you will also see the following notation:

$ whoami calum $ ls Downloads Documents 

This means that the command whoami is executed which gives calum as output. Following that command, ls is executed which outputs Downloads Documents .

This means that the command should be run as root, that is, using sudo :

Note that the # character is also used for comments.

# this command will give your username whoami # the next command will show the contents of the current directory ls 

How do I open a terminal:

• Open the Dash (Super Key) or Applications and type terminal
• Use the keyboard shortcut by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T .
• For older or Ubuntu versions: (More Info) Applications → Accessories → Terminal

Alternative names for the terminal:

Common commands & Further information

Another reason that people helping you will prefer to give you terminal-based commands over directing you through a GUI is simply because you type everything in directly. There’s no searching for applications and/or menu items. Don’t be put off by the sole text-interface. To this day, whenever I open a command-prompt in Windows, people instantly ask me if I’m hacking their computer or some other such nonsense. The terminal is your friend.

Lazy tip: You can use drag and drop to drop files and folders from the filemanager into the terminal, which will give you the complete path to apply a command to the file. It’s the best of both worlds.

A Terminal is your interface to the underlying operating system via a shell, usually bash. It is a command line.

Back in the day, a Terminal was a screen+keyboard that was connected to a server. Today, it is usally just a progam.

You can open it via the utilities part of the apllications menu, or press Alt + F2 and type gnome-terminal .

The terminal (also known as console) is an application in which you can execute commands directly. It looks like:

You can start the terminal from Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal.
If you’re not using Gnome, but KDE (Kubuntu), you would find it under: Kickoff menu -> Applications -> System -> Konsole.

The Ubuntu wiki has an article about the terminal which includes information on starting the terminal in Xubuntu and Lubuntu, and a basic overview of commonly used commands. It’s recommended for reading as it includes much examples as well.

«Shell» and «terminal» don’t really mean the same thing. For example, in the screenshot above, the terminal is probably gnome-terminal . The shell is probably bash .

Strictly speaking, those are indeed not the same. However, I mentioned it because the word «shell» is often used to refer to the place where you can enter commands. It happens to be that the terminal opens that shell, but a novice user may not directly relate it.

A Terminal is a command interpreter. A Terminal is an entity that takes input from the user and deals with the computer rather than the user deal directly with the computer. If the user had to deal directly with the computer he would not get much done as the computer only understands strings of 1’s and 0’s

When a person drives a car, that person doesn’t have to actually adjust every detail that goes along with making the engine run, or the electronic system controlling all of the engine timing and so on. The dashboard would also be considered part of the the Terminal since pertinent (Having logical precise relevance to the matter at hand) information relating to the user’s involvement in operating the car is displayed there. In fact any part of the car that the user has control of during operation of the car would be considered part of the Terminal.

Terminal is a program that allows the user to use the computer without him having to deal directly with it. It is in a sense a protective shell that prevents the user and computer from coming into contact with one another.

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How to open a Linux terminal window

Say you are new to Linux world and just installed Linux desktop and now you would like to fire up terminal window and start issuing commands, but wait you don’t know how to access a terminal window in Linux, in this article I will walk you through how to open a Linux terminal window and set up a keyboard shortcut for easier access.

Before I begin, allow me to explain the basic differences between a shell and a terminal emulator.

The shell

The shell is a command-line interface program that takes commands from the user as an input, processes the command, and prints out the output to the display. In most Linux systems, you will find bash (Bourne Again SHell) installed and is the default, Bash is an enhanced version of Unix shell program sh (shell). Apart from bash, there are other shell programs that can be installed on Linux machines such as ksh, zsh, and csh.

The terminal emulator

Simply put, a Terminal Emulator is a program that allows users to interact with shell in the graphical user interface (GUI) environment.
Some familiar terminal emulators you might find in Linux distros are:

Opening the Linux terminal window

I am using a Centos 8 Machine with the Gnome Desktop Environment. I’m going to show you two different ways to open a Linux terminal window.

Option 1

Gnome desktop environment makes easy access of application, in order to access the terminal window, press the super key (aka Windows key) and you should see Terminal application listed on the left-hand side application pane if you don’t see it listed on here simple start searching for “Terminal” in the search area.

You should see a Terminal Emulator application

Option 2

The other way (my favorite) is to open the terminal window is with a keyboard shortcut. Who doesn’t like to have a keyboard shortcut? Keyboard shortcuts make it easier to launch apps.
You can create a keyboard shortcut to open a terminal window, create a new shortcut, press the super key and search for “keyboard” or “shortcut” and launch it.

Click on “+” option at the end of the list to create a new keyboard shortcut.

Provide the required information, Like Name of the shortcut, command. You can name this anything you would like to, I named it “Open Terminal Window”, the command, in this case, is “gnome-terminal” since gnome-terminal is installed on centos and RHEL machines. If you have other terminal emulators such as “konsole” provide that command in this field. In the next article, I will show you how to install other Linux terminal emulators.

Click on set shortcut button to set a new keyboard short cut, this is where you register key combination to launch the terminal window.

I used CTRL + ALT + T, you can use any combination, but remember this key combination should be unique and not being used by other keyboard shortcuts.

Finally, click on Add to register this keyboard shortcut and you’re all set to use the new terminal window shortcut you created.

Wrapping up

Whether you choose to create a keyboard shortcut to launch a terminal window or to simply launch it from Applications, it’s simple to open the Linux terminal window in Linux. The process is similar to other desktop environments. For myself, I like the luxury of using keyboard shortcuts. In a future article, I will show you how to install additional terminal emulators onto your Linux system. Until then, enjoy practicing at your new-found graphical command line.

Want to try out Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Download it now for free.

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