you need to HACK faster!! (Linux Terminal hacks YOU NEED!!)

About this video

This is a hands-on Linux terminal speed tutorial, taught inside a free Hack The Box Academy Linux Fundamentals lab, aimed at making viewers faster at the command line without a mouse. It starts with navigation: plain cd returns home, cd .. moves up one directory and chaining ../.. climbs further, and cd - toggles back to the previous directory, which is powered by the OLDPWD variable alongside PWD. Listing is improved with ls -l for a detailed list and ls -la to reveal hidden dotfiles, then shortened with built-in aliases ll and la; viewers learn aliases can be custom-made and made permanent by adding them to the hidden .bashrc file. Tab completion, including double-tab to list options, and Ctrl+L to clear the screen are covered early. The core editing shortcuts follow: Ctrl+A and Ctrl+E jump to the start and end of a line, Ctrl+U deletes before the cursor, Ctrl+K deletes after it, Ctrl+Y pastes deleted text back, Alt+Backspace removes a word, and Ctrl+X then E opens the current long command in the default editor (nano in the lab) so it can be fixed and then run on exit. For logs, less is preferred over cat for large files, sudo !! reruns the previous command with sudo after a permission-denied error, tail shows the last lines of a file such as /var/log/auth.log, tail -f follows it live, and Ctrl+R reverse-searches command history.

Key takeaways

• Navigate faster with cd to go home, ../ chains to climb multiple levels, and cd - to bounce between two directories using OLDPWD
• Use ls -la to expose hidden files, shorten it with aliases like ll and la, and persist your own aliases in .bashrc
• Edit long commands without arrow keys: Ctrl+A/E for line ends, Ctrl+U/K to cut before/after the cursor, Ctrl+Y to paste, and Alt+Backspace to delete a word
• Ctrl+X then E opens the current command in your editor for comfortable fixing, and it runs when you save and exit
• Work logs efficiently with less instead of cat, sudo !! to fix a forgotten sudo, tail -f for live following, Tab/double-Tab completion, and Ctrl+R history search

Episode details: published May 27, 2022 · 19:40 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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