Fundamental Navigation

Confirm exactly where you are and inventory a new workspace.

Start gently: learn where you are, what is around you, and how Linux lists files.

Outcome: The terminal stops feeling like a blank scary box and starts feeling like a file explorer with words.

Mental model

Understand what is happening

Linux has a single filesystem tree starting at /.

Your home folder is written as ~.

Before running commands, pwd is your safety seatbelt.

Guided lab

Work through the mission

Where am I?

Safe

Prints your current folder.

Terminal

pwd

Identify your Linux environment

Read-only

Shows the kernel, architecture, distribution details, and (when applicable) the WSL distribution name. These checks are safe on Ubuntu, most Linux distributions, and WSL.

Terminal

uname -srmo
cat /etc/os-release
if [ -n "$WSL_DISTRO_NAME" ]; then echo "WSL distro: $WSL_DISTRO_NAME"; fi

List files

Safe

Shows files in normal, detailed, hidden, human-readable, and time-sorted views.

Terminal

ls
ls -l
ls -la
ls -lh
ls -ltr

Create first practice items

Safe

Creates harmless files and a folder inside the sandbox.

Terminal

touch file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
mkdir testdir
ls -la

Checkpoint

Verify the mission

pwd ends in linux-practice and ls -la shows the workspace contents.

Try it yourself

One step without a recipe

Run the setup command first. Identify your distribution and whether you are using WSL. Create three files and one folder. Compare ls, ls -l, and ls -la output.

Need a hint?

Run `pwd` before every command that creates or deletes files. It takes one second and saves you from 'I thought I was somewhere else' moments.

Explain it back

Before you move on

What command confirms your current folder?
What does ls -a show that ls hides?