Linux · The Terminal & Getting Help

You accidentally cat a binary file and now the terminal shows nothing but garbage characters — even normal text looks corrupted. How do you fix it without closing the terminal?

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More in The Terminal & Getting Help

On a desktop Linux system, which terminal-emulator programs are you most likely to find, and how do they split by desktop environment?

You select some text in a terminal window and press Ctrl+C to copy it, but nothing lands on the clipboard. Why, and what should you press instead?

You click in the middle of a long command line in a terminal, expecting the cursor to move there like in a GUI text box. What does the mouse actually do in a terminal?

In Linux documentation you often see command examples prefixed with user$ or root#. What do these prefixes mean and how should you treat them when typing?

A long command is printed across two lines, the first ending with a backslash. What does that trailing backslash do, and what must you change if you retype it all on one line?

Logged in as a normal user, you need to run a whole series of commands as root without prefixing every one. What is the usual way to get an interactive root shell, and how do you leave it?

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