A More Noob-Friendly Terminal

This is the third, and final, part of my terminal guide.

• The first one was about basic concepts,
• the second about why you might want to use and become familiar with the terminal,
• and this is how you can make your terminal more noob-friendly (regardless of what you’ll end up using it for).

I’m not saying these things are stuff everyone should do – but they are things that have helped me like the terminal much more. And feel free to just pick-and-choose the things you want to try out.

Also, as I’m a Mac user, this might be a bit Mac-centric. But I think all of the programs I’m mentioning also exist for Linux – and many of them for Windows as well. (And installation is probably similar.)

Choice of app

One thing that has tripped me up quite a bit, is that terminals adhere to different text manipulation conventions than the rest of the OS. For instance, Shift+Command+Left will usually select text from the caret and all the way to the left – but it doesn’t in terminals. To be fair, the hotkeys in the terminal are probably better, if you know them. But to me, it’s just impractical that they’re different when I spend so much more time with “regular” bindings. (Here’s a video showing some of the default bindings in most terminals!)

The only terminal I’ve found that behaves like regular apps, when it comes to text, is Warp 🖇️. It also has several helpful AI tools integrated. However, this is a controversial recommendation. Among other things, it has gotten a lot of flack for the fact that you used to have to log in to use it, and that it’s quite bloated compared to other terminals. But I still think it’s a good choice for beginners!

If you want something leaner, either to start with or if you’ve graduated from Warp, I recommend Ghostty.¹ I’m currently using Ghostty – and the screenshots in these posts are from it. I don’t miss the AI features, as I prefer to keep a chat going in Raycast 🖇️ anyway. And I’m getting by with the, in my opinion, poorer text manipulation.

Customising

The Why and What

In part one, I tried to establish the basic concepts, like terminal emulator, shell, prompt, and CLI. In this part, I want to go into why people use the terminal – and in the next part, how to make it more noob-friendly.

“But why do people use this archaic thing?”

As mentioned in part one, I’m absolutely not one of those who live in the terminal. But if I were to guess (and this applies to my basic usage as well), I’d say two things are the most important: It’s fast, and it’s powerful.

One way it can be fast, is that CLI programs are computational efficient, as there’s a lot of stuff (like graphics) they don’t need to render.

Another way is that you can do quite complicated tasks in a single* command. For instance, I’ll sometimes run this:

for dir in */; do
(cd "$dir" && mkdir -p .Originals && cp * .Originals/)
done

This will

• run through all folders in a parent,
• add a hidden folder in each, named .Originals,
• and place a copy of each file in that hidden folder.

I use this to create backups of files before editing them (in a specific workflow), and it happens instantly. 👌🏻

CLI tools are both powerful in terms of what they can do, and also in that they’re usually highly customisable. They’re also generally easy to combine with each other, because they often do one thing.

And the combination of being fast and powerful, if you know what you’re doing, makes it a valuable tool in which to invest.

“But what can you use it for?”

The Basic Concepts

If you’re like me, from time-to-time you’ll come across tasks that should be done in the terminal. But as you’re not very familiar with it, you wince a bit, and then just paste whatever they say, and hope for the best. The guide might also assume you know a bunch of concepts, that you don’t really understand. Like, why do some commands start with $?

Hopefully, this guide can answer some of the questions you’re too afraid to ask, and make you less afraid of the terminal. I’ll never be a person who lives in the terminal (especially as I’m not a programmer) – but I’ve managed to get to where I like it, and will be happy if a task can be done there.

Sorry that this will be a bit Mac-focused. But hopefully, it can be useful for more than Mac users!

• Part Two: The Why and What
• Part Three: A More Noob-Friendly Terminal

Basic concepts

To me, things get much less daunting if I understand some basic concepts. And here are some of the basic things you won’t necessarily see explained on guides that include some terminal stuff.

CLI vs. GUI