Files and Directories
Where you are, and how to get home.
The terminal always stands somewhere among your files. That somewhere has a name, and you can move it. This guide teaches the three ideas underneath every later guide: opening the terminal, knowing where it stands, and getting back home.
You need your Fedora laptop and nothing else. Every command here only looks around; nothing is moved or deleted.
I
Open the terminal
On your Fedora laptop the terminal app is called Konsole. Open it: press the Super key (the Windows key), type konsole, press Enter.
A dark window appears with a line ending in $. That line is the prompt. It is Konsole saying it is ready, the same way a text message box waits for you to type.
Prove it is ready. pwd asks the terminal where it is standing (fully explained in the next section). Type it and press Enter:
pwdIt prints a folder name, something like /home/jesse. That printout is the terminal proving it heard you. Anything that prints an answer means it is working.
II
Your home directory
Every user on the laptop gets a home directory: one folder that holds all of their stuff — Documents, Downloads, Pictures, everything with your name on it. Yours lives at /home/jesse.
Konsole starts there every time it opens. Wherever you wander later, home is the place you return to.
The pwd you just ran stands for “print working directory.” The working directory is simply where the terminal is standing right now. Fresh out of the gate it should read /home/jesse.
Wander somewhere else for a moment, so the idea lands. / is the root from the last guide, and it is always there, so it never fails. Run:
cd /
pwdThe second pwd should now read just /. You moved, and pwd proves it. The terminal did not go anywhere on screen — its standing place changed.
III
Getting back with cd
cd means “change directory,” which is just moving the terminal’s standing place. Run bare, with nothing after it, it always goes home — no matter how lost you are.
From wherever you are standing now, run:
cd
pwdpwd should read /home/jesse again. That is the trick: cd alone means home, from anywhere, every time.
Make it muscle memory. Wander off and come back twice:
cd /
pwd
cd
pwdYou should see the printouts alternate between / and /home/jesse. When that pattern is boring, you own it.
Review what this taught. Konsole is the terminal app and the prompt is it waiting. The terminal always stands somewhere, shown by pwd. Your home directory at /home/jesse is where it starts and where your things live. Bare cd returns there from anywhere. Later guides say “check pwd first” and “cd home” — this is what they mean.