Setting up A Command Line

Below are basic instructions to get up and running before getting down to actually using the terminal.

Windows

Install Windows Terminal

Install Windows Terminal and launch it. If you have Windows 11, this may already be installed. You can customise the appearance of the terminal through its settings. You may wish to choose a colour scheme and font which suits your eyes.

Install Powershell

Download and run the MSI package from here.

Next, set Powershell (not Windows Powershell) as the default in Windows Terminal. You also do some further tuning of the settings (font, colour, etc.) at this poinf.

MacOS

MacOS comes with a built in terminal which works fine. The current shell language is zsh, which quite similar in syntax to bash. You may wish to change the default shell to bash by running chsh -s /bin/bash. Using the defaults works fine, but bear in mind the differences between using bash and zsh may need some consideration from time to time. Overall, for everyday use they are effectively the same.

Linux

If you are using Linux, then it is likely that you are familiar with the command line already.

Your system should come with a default terminal. The default keybinding to open it is Ctrl-Alt-T. The default shell is bash.