Hello and thank you for joining me as we cover basic setup for someone using Windows.
This is Lesson 3 of my class Nix Basics Fast, a crash course in the essential terminal commands you will need to be a successful programmer, IT, DevOps, or Dev Ex engineer. I’m so glad you are joining me today.
In this lesson, I’ll cover basic ideas around keyboards, modifier keys, the difference between the Powershell prompt and the Linux promp, intalling & setting up Windos Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and learning to interact with the linux system called Ubuntu.
In addition, we’ll cover what the control and meta keys mean for Linux.
If you have a Mac operating system, please skip this lesson and see Lesson 2.
The agenda for today is:
- Keyboard concepts
- Installing WSL & Ubuntu
- Working with Ubuntu
- Updating Packages
- Keystroke Modifier Keys
Keyboard Concepts
To start with Linux, you’ll need a Terminal. A terminal is a window that you will type commands in. We’ll get to Terminals in just a minute, but first let’s talk about your keyboard.
The characters or keys you type are called keystrokes. If you type characters normally, the Terminal window typically will accept what you type as letters to be inserted. These keystrokes are called non-modified, because you aren’t using a modifier key to make the keystroke.
What is a modifier key? Most of us are already familiar with the shift key. The shift key will produce the uppercase letter instead of the lowercase letter.
As well, you can use the shift key to type the special characters that appears above the normal character on your keyboard. For example, all of the numbers on your standard keyboard have cooresponding special characters: Shift-2 produces an @ symbol, Shift-3 produces a # symbol.
For programmers these symbols have special names. Let’s go over the special names of the special characters associated with the numbers on your keyboard.
Remember, the names of these special characters are specific to hackers and the programmer community. The names are typically not used by non-programmers.
| What you press | How it looks | Commonly called | What programmers call this character |
| Shift 1 | ! | exclamation mark | bang |
| Shift 2 | @ | At symbol | whirlpool |
| Shift 3 | # | Pound or hatch* symbol | mesh, hash |
| Shift 4 | $ | money sign | money, dollar, big money |
| Shift 5 | % | division symbol | percent, mod |
| Shift 6 | ^ | Footnote symbol | carrot |
| Shift 7 | & | ampersand | ampersand |
| Shift 8 | * | astericks | star, splat |
| Shift 9 | ( | Open paren | Left paren |
| Shift 0 | ) | Close paren | Right paren |
Here are a few others you should note. Take note that programmers call { and } the “brackets” and [ and ] the “braces”. If you cannot remember the difference between “brackets” and “braces” (which is easy to confuse in your head), the “square” and “curly”. We will often “enclosed in curly brackets” or “square braces” to talk about wrapping a part of code or configuration.
| Shift-comma | < | Less than | Less than |
| Shift-period | > | Greater than | Greater than |
| [ key (not modified) | [ | open brace | Open brace, open square brace (or “square bracket”) |
| ] key (not modified) | ] | close brace | close bracket, close square brace (or “square bracket”) |
| Shift-[ | { | open bracket | open bracket or curly bracket |
| Shift-] | } | close bracket | close bracket or curly bracket |
| / | / | slash | forward slash |
| \ | \ | reverse slash | backslash |
| Shift-backslash | | | Vertical bar, pipe | pipe |
When you are talking with other programmers, if you use the programmer names for these characters you will set yourself apart as someone who knows the correct terms.
It will demonstrate to other developers that you are not a n00b (which is programmer speak for newbie) because you have studied the correct names and know how to refer to the special characters using their programmer names.
Windows users often will conflate the words “slash” and “backslash,” sometimes referring to a slash as a “backslash” or a backslash as a “slash.” Note the one that goes from the upper left to the lower right is the backslash, and the one that goes from the lower left to the upper right is the forward slash or just slash.
Installing Ubuntu
Le’ts start with the difference betwen the Powershell prompt and a Linux terminal.
The powershell prompt is the prompt built-in to Windows. It accepts powershell commands, also known as cmdlets, which interact with your Windows operating system. Powershell commands follow a consistent Verb-Noun naming convention.
You get to the PowerShell prompt by right-clicking on the desktop -> and then choosing Open Terminal.
Type Get-Verb
To install WSL (or the Unix terminal), we will use the PowerShell prompt itself.
This is the standard way you refer to folders and files in UNIX: The slashes separate folder from each other or, for the final slash, it separates the folder containing the file from the file name. Slahes denote the file hierarchy — a directed tree structure where each folder can contain any number of other folders or files. It is called a “directed” tree because it has one direction: from the root of the hard drive down (or up, depending on your perspective) into the folders and files on the system.
Install WSL
Set WSL 2 as Default (Optional): If you want to use WSL 2 by default, run the following command in PowerShell:
(Remember, you can tell youare in the Powershell because the terminal line looks something like C:\...\...)
Type
wsl --set-default-version 2
Now run the WSL install using:
wsl --install
This is actually all you need to do to install Ubuntu. What is Ubuntu? Ubuntu is a Linux distribution. In other words, a flavor of Linux.
Working with Ubuntu
Next, we’ll switch to the Linux Terminal. Remember, the Linux Terminal looks similar to the Powershell prompt but works with the Linux subsystem we installed.
Once you have installed WSL and Ubuntu by running the command above, you’ll open Ubuntu by searching for it from the search bar:
Windows 10 vs Windows 11
While you’re in Windows Subsystem for Linux, you are using a UNIX-based subsystem, and therefore, the terminal inside of WSL is a UNIX-based terminal.
While you’re in Windows Subsystem for Linux, you are using a UNIX-based subsystem; therefore, the terminal inside WSL is a UNIX-based terminal. Remember, the slashes in your directory structure no longer have backslashes but instead use forward slashes.
When you find & launch Ubuntu (what we are doing above), it opens like this:
The first thing to do is find out where we are, which you won’t even learn until the next lesson.
Type the letters pwd and hit return. pwd is our very first Unix command! It stands for print working directory, and it does just that: prints (displays to the screen) the working directory we are in.
The terminal responds with something like:
This tells you “where you are” in your hard drive. This is the specific folder where your Terminal prompt will use as the directory for any further Unix commands. Specifically, this is referred to as the working directory.
The working directory is the point where you are currently browsing, right there in this terminal session. It is unique to this terminal session. If you start a new terminal window (for example, in another tab or another window), that terminal session will have its own working directory.
We will soon learn how to navigate around the working directory.
Update Packages
What is a package?
Next, let’s update our packages using a program called apt
Remember, you get here by searching for “Ubuntu” in the applications bar and opening the Linux terminal:
sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade
This will update and upgrade our installed packages. This is a common thing to do after first setting up a system on any Unix platform. It’s important to periodically update your installed packages so that you are working with current, security-patched packages.
Keystroke Modifier Keys (C- and M-)
In Unix, we have a concept of keyboard modifiers. These are keys you see on the lower left (and sometimes lower right) of your keyboard. In the mac, you’ll see (from left to right):
• fn key (for “function”)
• control key (marked with ^)
• Alt key (also known as the Meta key)
• The Windows key, which in Linux is known as the super key.
Unix keystrokes come in either or a combination of C- (for control key) and M- for meta. When you read Unix documentation, you’ll see markers like these to indicate keystrokes you should type on your keyboard to activate that function.
When a Unix documentation tells says a keystroke begins with C- it is telling you that the modifier key for that keystroke is the control key (marked “control”) on your keyboard. When Unix documentation tells you that a keystroke begins with M-, it is telling you that the modifier key for that keystreak is the meta key. These two are commonly found throughout Unix documents.
The meta key is the Alt key on your keyboard.
Ok, that’s about it for this lesson. Once you are comfortable with where the modifier keys are and how to keystroke Control and Meta, you can turn to the next lesson to start putting them to use.
In Lesson 4 we will learn to navigate around your Terminal window.