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!
I did 4 things, that helped me a lot:
alias cem=’cd /home/drops/.config/emacs’
alias. .=’cd. . && ls’
Three points for two levels up, etc...
Name all directories lowercase, 3-5 letters long, and try to avoid directories with the same starting letter as siblings That way you can use tab completion with just a single letter
Use the option to jump to subdirectories of /home/user from everywhere.
Instead of aliases, I use variables that I set in my .bashrc.
For example, on WSL I have
export WINDOWS_HOME=/mnt/c/Users/username. Then I can justcd $WINDOWS_HOME. Orcp $WINDOWS_HOME/Downloads/some_file .Instead of aliases, I just have lots of symlinks in my homedir.
I do have
..and...aliases though.Mostly if I'm gonna work with files I just use
ranger, or FZF from my shell to find stuff.Ranger looks like how my brain wants to work. I'll have to check that out. I like the idea of symlinks too.