Terminal vs. Bash vs. Command line vs. Prompt

Are you a secret smoothbrain who doesn't know the difference between a terminal emulator and bash? Find out the difference here so you don't look like a brainlet on R*ddit!

[DannyMexen]

"All of those different things are different." - L. Smith 2019

[ehllie]

I love your stuff Luke, but to be honest I use only like 5-10% of the tips you give. I'm here mostly for the powerful boomer energy

[maxchristman]

People on stack overflow be like: 3:13-3:16

[grjesus]

So, to sum up:
- Terminal: Program that emulates the functionality of an old terminal. Nowadays it includes much more functionalities than old days.

- Bash: Interpreted language than is being used to interface with the computer and OS.

- Command line: The line in wich you are writting the code inside the terminal

- Prompt: Small portion of information, at the beginning of every command line that shows something related to the computer user or basic information about the computer within few words

Let me know if i am wrong. Dont forget, we all are learners, dont take it seriusly.

[SolomonUcko]

2:07 Sure, you could consider bash a language. But the terminal emulator isn't running bash-the-language, it's running bash-the-shell which runs bash-the-language. (A shell is a type of interpreter.) Also, the shell you use is normally decided by a per-user configuration setting, not by the terminal emulator.

[catwhisperer]

I've lived all of 67 years now and it wasn't until I began watching you, Luke, that I learned I'm a boomer and that I have all these amazing powers at my disposal. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Bah! Humbug! From one boomer to another, I love your vids :)

[davidjulien]

Me: Damn Luke, the holiday season really did improve your YT productivity !

Luke: Don't worry kiddo, I'll go AWOL for the next 2 months.

[isaacrobot]

1 day later
Distrotube: Why use Bash or Zsh when you can AWK everything

[norcal]

Very informative... I just have one question. How do you change the background color of Python 3.7? 😂

[nikokral]

[9:40] Sure, the prompt colors are set in the shell configuration, but they're not interpreted by the shell. It's the terminal emulator that interprets and displays them (ANSI escape codes).

[BillSteinhauser]

Quick Summary: Terminal, Bash, Comand Line, Prompt... different aspects of what you may be using at the same time.
[2] BASH is a "shell" program that runs as soon as you login to unix/Linux, and tries to understand commands that you type, then figure out what you want the computer to do next. (often by finding another program you want to run) There are sever "shell" options: sh=Bourne-Shell, ksh=Korn-sheell, csh=C-shell, bash=bourne-again-shell, and more.
[3] a COMMMAND Line represents the that YOU type into the computer's shell.
[4] a PROMPT means that the computer is waiting for you to type something in to the computer from the keyboard. Prompt also refers to any short text message that the computer prints out (just before the cursor) to let you know what's going on, and what to type next.

So... al lof these may be "active" at the same time when you are logged into a Linux computer.
The terminal could be the "window frame" and background, that defines the frame, appearance, fonts, and general "canvas" for text information to be displayed on. Within that terminal environment, the computer may be running a bash "shell" that is displaying a prompt, and waiting for you to type a command line. After you type the command line and press enter, the shell reads that command line and tries to do what you want, or finds another program that will do that for you.

If you want to change how things LOOK, for background/fonts, or scroll around, that is generally related to the Termianal's scope of responsibility.
If you want to change how things BEHAVE, or your environment variables, or change your prompt, work with the Shell.
If you want to automate things with a simple "shell script" program, then you will need to create a file full of shell commands using an editor like vi/vim and then tell the shell to run the commands in that file.
Almost anything else requires running additional programs. (which the shell will help you find+run through $PATH directories)

SO: That's a 30 second summary of this 11 minute video.

[TheNoirKamui]

I have never seen this type of video before, but it is suddenly obvious that there should be more people pointing out these differences. Very good! Thank you.

[miladabujarada]

"Laugh at it" 100 times! No need to laugh at people you can politely correct them and explain to them so they understand. Noobs are in a learning process and the last thing they want is to be launched at. Keep doing the good work through your videos and be more sensitive towards noobs because this is a field where even the most experienced engineers have new technologies to learn almost every year. By the way I gave the video 👍🏽

[Sierra]

3:08 CTRL+K, CTRL+U, CTRL+Y is basically -copying- cutting and pasting in bash.
Copying/pasting to/from clipboard in a script could fall under "copying and pasting in bash" too.

[ttttt_]

"What is bash?"
Isn't it obvious? Bash is bloat.

[bartoszmackiewicz]

Hey, Luke! There is a way to run Python-like environment as a shell. It is called xonsh and it is a superset of Python aimed to make it more shell-like (completion, piping, history, easy access to environment variables). As far as I know it is in development but that's pretty cool project (but to be frank it has many issues, e.g. slow startup time).

[netrezv]

Good video!
I'd also add in about a little difference between CLI (ls, dd, youtube-dl, pacman) and TUI (vim, newsboat, ranger, irssi) programs while on this topic, because people tend to confuse these pretty often.

[philome]

"bash is merely a language" "bash has this binding control C"

[deeznutz]

Every video Luke uploads is another month Luke will go MIA.

[thingsiplay]

"Don't say funny things…" - Luke Smith, 2019