Command Prompt and PowerShell

Windows has a command line too, and it is very useful: IT staff use it to check a network, find a file or repair a setting far faster than clicking through menus. If you may use a Windows laptop one day, knowing it will make you feel at home in either system. The ideas are the same as on Ubuntu: a window, a program that reads your commands, and folders to move through. Only the command names differ. In this lesson every command only looks around or works inside a practice folder that you create.

Three names that are easy to mix up

On Ubuntu you learned that the Terminal is the window and the Shell is the program inside it that understands your commands. Windows follows the same split, but has two shells and one window program.

• Windows Terminal is the modern window. It can hold several tabs, and each tab can run a different shell. On Windows 11 it is normally the default.
• {{command-prompt|Command Prompt}} (also called cmd) is the older shell. It has existed since the early days of Windows. It is simple, and many old guides use it.
• {{powershell|PowerShell}} is the newer, more powerful shell. Its commands are called cmdlets and are named Verb-Noun, such as Get-ChildItem. Windows 11 includes the older version called Windows PowerShell 5.1, which is what these lessons use.

Think of Windows Terminal as a phone and the two shells as two different messaging apps that run on it. You can change app without changing phone. Many beginner commands work in both shells, and PowerShell also accepts several old Command Prompt words (dir, cd, copy) as nicknames, called aliases.

Opening a terminal on Windows 11

The prompt is the shell's way of saying it is ready. It shows your current folder, the place where commands act unless you say otherwise. The PS in front tells you the shell is PowerShell. Never type the prompt itself.

Looking around: where am I and what is here?

Windows paths use a backslash (\) between folders and start with a drive letter such as C:. Linux uses a forward slash. In PowerShell, Get-Location shows your current folder and Get-ChildItem lists what is inside it. The shorter nicknames pwd and ls also work in PowerShell, and Command Prompt uses cd with no argument and dir instead. Set-Location Documents (or cd Documents) moves you into a folder inside the current one, and cd .. moves one level up. These commands only read or move you; nothing is changed.

Get-Location
Get-ChildItem
Set-Location Documents
Get-Location
Set-Location ..

Dates are shown in your computer's local format, so yours may look different. The same actions in Command Prompt are shown below.

Making a safe practice folder

From now on, anything that creates or changes files happens inside one folder called practice in your user folder. If you make a mistake, you only affect that folder. In PowerShell, $HOME is a built-in shortcut for your user folder (C:\Users\Amina). New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $HOME\practice creates the folder; -ItemType Directory says you want a folder and -Path says where. Then Set-Location $HOME\practice moves you in, and New-Item -ItemType File -Name notes.txt creates an empty text file. Test-Path notes.txt answers True if it exists. In Command Prompt the matching commands are mkdir, cd and type nul > notes.txt.

PowerShell and Linux side by side

If you already know some Ubuntu commands, this table helps. The ideas match; the names and slashes differ. Many PowerShell commands have a Linux-style nickname, but PowerShell's real names are longer so that they describe themselves.