If you're going to live in the terminal, you need to get around. In a GUI, you click folders. In Unix, you type. Three commands handle 99% of navigation: pwd, cd, and ls. Let's start with the first two.
Where am I? — pwd
pwd stands for "print working directory." It tells you exactly where you are in the file system right now.
$ pwd
/home/you
Your "working directory" is the folder your terminal is currently sitting in. When you run commands or open files, this is the starting point.
Try it Yourself →Moving around — cd
cd means "change directory." Give it a path and it teleports you there.
$ cd Documents
$ pwd
/home/you/Documents
Type cd with no arguments to go straight back to your home directory. It's the shortcut for "take me home."
The shortcuts: . and ..
Every directory has two special entries:
.(dot) — this directory. It's not super useful alone, but you'll use it later...(dot dot) — the parent directory. Go up one level.
$ pwd
/home/you/Documents/projects
$ cd ..
$ pwd
/home/you/Documents
$ cd ../..
$ pwd
/home
You can chain .. to go up multiple levels. ../../.. goes up three directories.
Tab completion
Pro tip: you almost never need to type full paths. Start typing a directory name and press Tab. The terminal fills in the rest. If multiple options match, press Tab twice to see them all. This saves more time than any other trick — use it constantly.