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!
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
pushdandpopdare good for keeping a history and going back to different directories.If you like those, using cdr within zsh is amazing. It automatically keeps track of where you've been, and you can set up tab completion to show the history with a number next to each directory for easy switching.
Iirc, that was my main reason for switching to zsh a few years ago
That's really cool. I guess the only advantage is pushd and popd is that they're usually already installed.
you can also put !! for the most recent history entry, useful if you forget to put sudo