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3 Fundamentals of the Linux system and terminal usage

Figure 3.18 Example of a man page

3.4 Customizing the system and the shell 3.4
Running various shell commands in sequence or combining them us-
ing chain operators is already faster and more convenient than doing
all these tasks manually, such as through a GUI file manager. However,
one might want to take it a step further and automate some of the
more frequent and repetitive tasks. Moreover, the bash shell itself is
highly customizable, both in terms of its appearance and its function-
ality. In this sense, the following subsections present a few guided pro-
jects that can help the reader start experimenting, customizing, and
automating their system and the shell.

Launching the terminal at login
In the user’s home folder, there is a file named “.profile” that controls
the behaviour of their working environment. Any commands placed
in this file are executed at every login session. Thus, for instance, one
could add a command to launch the terminal automatically each time
they log into the system.
To accomplish this, let us first open the “.profile” file in the Nano
( https://www.nano-editor.org/) text editor.
nano .profile
Then, append the command for launching the terminal at the end
of the file. To move the cursor around use the arrow keys (Figure 3.19).

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