What is a terminal?
A terminal is the window where you type commands; the shell inside it does the actual work.
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A terminal is the text window you type into. Historically it was a physical screen and keyboard wired to a big computer; today it is an app that pretends to be one. It draws characters, forwards your key presses, and nothing more. The brain is the shell running inside it; the terminal is just the screen and keyboard.
Terminal.app and iTerm2 on macOS, GNOME Terminal and Konsole on Linux, Windows Terminal on Windows, and the integrated terminal in VS Code are all terminal emulators. When you SSH into a server, your local terminal shows a shell that is running far away. Learning a few shortcuts (Ctrl+C to stop a command, Ctrl+R to search history, Tab to complete) pays off quickly.
tty
echo $TERMSee also: What is a shell? and What is SSH?
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See also
- 0049 Pipes and redirection: connecting commands A pipe sends one command's output into another command, and redirection sends output to a file. Together they let small tools build… Beginner · Explains an idea · Linux, macOS Article Basics · Text processing 15 Oct 2026
- 0050 File permissions: chmod, chown and what 755 means Every file has an owner, a group and read/write/execute permissions for three kinds of users. chmod changes the permissions and chown changes… Beginner · Explains an idea · Linux, macOS Article Basics 15 Oct 2026
- 0051 Environment variables and PATH Environment variables are named settings that every program inherits from the shell. PATH is the one that tells the shell where to… Beginner · Explains an idea · Linux, macOS Article Basics 15 Oct 2026
- 0057 Shell cheat sheet: everyday commands A quick reference for moving around, managing files, viewing and searching text, checking processes and disk space in bash and zsh, with… Beginner · Cheat sheet · Linux, macOS Article Basics · Command-line tools 15 Oct 2026
- 0284 What is a shell? A shell is the program that reads the commands you type and tells the operating system to run them. Beginner · Explains an idea · Any system Article Basics 15 Oct 2026
- 0286 What is PATH? PATH is the list of folders your shell searches to find a program when you type its name. Beginner · Explains an idea · Any system Article Basics 15 Oct 2026
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