Ubuntu Basics
The command Line
Ubuntu like all personal computers revolves around a command line interface. Anything you have ever done on a PC is executed from the command line. Every time you open, copy, or paste a file it is executed in the command line. The program used to access the command line in Ubuntu is terminal. The command line is where most actions will be performed while using and working with ROS. Here are to resources for tutorials http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/ and http://ryanstutorials.net/linuxtutorial/
Basic Commands
Auto Complete
Tab is the auto complete button in the command line. If there are multiple options it will list them. It can complete paths and commands. Use it!
Root
The forward slash represents the division between folders or files. The very first / is the root directory. The / is equivilant to the C:/ drive in a windows machine.
/
Home
The tilde is a short hand for the home directory. The long hand equivalent would be /home/username
~
Usually you will see "~/" which is "/home/user/". This is where the terminal starts off.
ls
- list files and directories in current folder.
ls
ls -a
- list all files and directories
ls -a
mkdir
- make a directory
mkdir ~/unixstuff
cd Directory
- change to named directory
cd unixstuff
cd
- change to home-directory
cd
cd ~
- change to home-directory
cd ~
cd ..
- change to parent directory
cd ..
pwd
- display the path of the current directory
pwd
cp file1 file2
- copy file1 and call it file2
cp ~/filetocopy ~/copiedfile
mv file1 file2
- move or rename file1 to file2
rm file
- remove a file
rm ~/file
- you can also remove a folder and all its files
rm ~/folder -r
rmdir directory
- remove a directory
rmdir ~/directory
grep 'keyword' file
search a file for keywords
grep myrobot ~/
man command
read the online manual page for a command
man grep
Compression
A tar.bz2 is the standard compressed file for Ubuntu.
To extract a tar.bz2 file to the current directory
tar jxvf <filename>.tar.bz2
To Compress a tar.bz2 to the current directory
tar jcvf <filename>.tar.bz2 dir1 dir2 file1 file2 etc
For more infomation visit Ubuntu Compression. The Ubuntu page includes .zip, .tar, .iso, and more.
Ubuntu Programs
Terminal
Terminal is a basic command line interface. Using the terminal The .bashrc file in the home directory is executed each time a terminal window is open. If you would like something to execute every time you open a terminal simply add it to the end of this file.
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://192.168.1.1:11311 //The Robots IP address. export ROS_HOSTNAME=192.168.1.2 // Workstation (The pc your looking at)
Gedit
Gedit is the Ubuntu default text editor with code coloring. It is similar to wordpad++ for windows.
NANO
Nano is an in terminal notepad for editing when you do not have graphics. It is minimalist and straight forward.
VIM
VIM is a command line text editing software that is installed by defualt on basically every operating system(on android and ios there is an app). It can be used as a command line interface and to execute programs in GUI's. It is worth knowing but is not required.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice Is an opensource version of office utilities.
