Deborah R. Fowler

Linux Quick Guide

Updated Apr 22 2016 Updated Sept 22 2026

ffmpeg GITHUB MSDOS vs Powershell / vs \ Path Symbols Houdini CLI Rendering

Overview Getting Started

You can use command line to do many things efficiently. For example, assemble your frames into a video using ffmpeg via command line — see the ffmpeg section.

To start an IDE:

Visual Studio Code (NOT Visual Studios) can we launched by typing code on both Linux and Windows.
Sublime is subl on Linux (Rocky) and sublime_text.exe on Windows.

Where are things?

A directory is just a folder (cd means change directory - it is like clicking on a folder but you give it a path)

/opt is where you will find things like /opt/hfs22.0/bin (think C drive on Windows)

/run/media is where you will find your hard drive you plugged in (on Mac it is VOLUMES)

Presentations on Linux

As you use linux more you will find it to be lightweight and efficient. During presentations on linux there are a handful of things that will quickly become familiar.

ls lists your files
cd change directory - you specify the path you want to go to

A few more quick tips are noted below.

Quick tips:

NOTEUse evince on Linux to open a PDF via command line
NOTEUse eog on Linux to open an image file via command line (Eye Of Gnome)
NOTEUse unzip on Linux to extract files from dropbox.com
NOTEUse gnome-screenshot -a to capture a selected area (analogous to Windows Snipping Tool)

If you are not on Linux you can use a cmd window on Windows to use command line

WindowsUse doskey to map commands — e.g. doskey ls = dir

WindowsUse the cmd window or Powershell for a more Linux-like experience — e.g. echo %Path% > test.txt instead of printenv (See MS-DOSHelpSheet for more details.)

No Linux? Comparison of DOS versus Linux commands

A note about forward / and backward \ slash in programming context

Linux Quick Guide Linux / Windows

Linux Quick Guide	to most commonly used commands	cmd on Windows
ls	lists the contents of the directory (folders are blue, files are black font) MS-Dos uses dir - on a whim, I tried this on linux and it works too!	dir
cd	change directory ie. cd ../ will go up a level or you may want to do to your home directory cd ~ or cd	cd
~	home directory
cp	copy and if it is an entire directory, cp -r (copy on msdos with no arguments)	copy
cp -r	entire directory	copy
	copy on MS-Dos with no arguments will copy folders intact xcopy src dest /s will copy all but not the top level (not very useful)
rm	removes / deletes a file rm -r deletes an entire directory	del
pwd	present working directory (where you are)	echo %cd%
.	current directory
./	current directory
ps	processor status (ie. what jobs are running)
kill -9 jobid	kill the job with this id from ps no matter what kill -segv will force it to save a version to /tmp
pkill houdini	kills any running houdini process matching that name
mkdir	make a directory (new folder)	mkdir
cd /opt	installations of Houdini can be found here	cd C:/Program Files
&	run an application as a background process gedit & this will leave the terminal window free to use	notepad++.exe &
keyboard up arrow	recalls the last command to save typing or ...
history	history lists recent commands and you can type !# where # is the number from the list	doskey /history F7
	and less common but useful commands
printenv	prints your paths and environment settings	echo %Path%
more	pipes a file to terminal display	more
eog	default image file viewer on linux (Eye of Gnome)
gnome-tweaks	GNOME Tweaks tool — use to enable minimize/maximize buttons on windows
gnome-screenshot -a	capture a selected area of the screen (analogous to Windows Snipping Tool)
evince	evince file.pdf allow you to view a pdf file via command line
unzip	uncompress a zip file
whereis	find where an application is located (and on Windows) where /r C:\ mplay.exe	where
	On a mac use which

Redirecting Output stdout / stderr

You can redirect command output into a file using >. For example:

python --version > test.txt

That creates test.txt and puts the output into it. More usefully, try:

husk --help > test.txt

But the file will be empty. Why? Because --help writes to Standard Error (stderr), not Standard Output (stdout). Fix it with:

husk --help > test.txt 2>&1

The 2>&1 redirects stderr into stdout so both end up in the file. This works on MSDOS too — tested using the hcmd "command line tools" window from SideFX Launcher (a regular cmd window with Houdini env pre-loaded).

Geany Settings on Linux Editor Config