How to open a terminal window

Linux has a very powerful command line environment. To use the command line, you need to open a terminal window - sometimes called a shell window. This page shows how to open a terminal window.

First, choose System Tools from the Applications menu:

Next choose Terminal or MATE Terminal from the System Tools menu:

Your terminal window will appear and will look something like this:

The picture above shows a window for a user named cc on a machine called crustan. Your terminal window will show your username and machine name in place of these.