If you haven't done so already, set up your command line environment with instructions from the Setting Up Your Terminal appendix.
Using your terminal, navigate to your Home directory using cd ~.
Use ls to view the contents of your Home directory.
Use cd to move into your Desktop directory. For most, the command to do
this is cd Desktop/ since the Desktop is most often a child of the Home
directory.
In the terminal, use mkdir to create a folder on the Desktop called
'my_first_directory'. Look on your Desktop. Do you see it?
Use cd my_first_directory/ to move inside that directory.
pwd to check your location.
There, make a file called 'my_first_file.txt' with
touch my_first_file.txt.
Open the file and write yourself a message!
Back in the terminal, list the contents of your current directory from the
terminal with ls.
Make a copy of your 'my_first_file.txt' from it's current spot to directly
on the Desktop with cp my_first_file.txt ../my_first_copy.txt.
Move back out to your Desktop directory from the terminal with cd ...
Use ls in the terminal to verify your 'my_first_copy.txt' on your
Desktop. Open it up. Is it the same as your first file?
Move your copied file into your 'my_first_directory' with
mv my_first_copy.txt my_first_directory/.
Use ls to see that the copied file is no longer on your Desktop.
Type cd my_first_directory/, followed by ls to confirm that your
copy has been moved into 'my_first_directory'.
cd .. to get back out to your Desktop.
Type rm -r my_first_directory/ and do a visual check, as well as ls
on your terminal, to verify that the directory has been removed.