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I'm try to change to my Desktop directory from the terminal.

Running

cd /home/desktop

gives an error in the terminal saying no directory found.

What am I doing wrong?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
7

iBelieve's answer covers almost everything, but alternatively you can type 

cd ~/Desktop/

the ~/ stands for /home/$USER/ or $HOME/

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  • 2
    +1 for mentioning the tilde-home shortcut. Although it stands for /home/<username>/.
    – Aaron
    Aug 20, 2013 at 18:33
  • <username> disappeared so I changed it to [username]
    – Akisame
    Aug 21, 2013 at 13:06
  • Home also needs to be lowercase, and you can use html escapes to get the < and > symbols to appear (I edited to demonstrate)
    – Drake Clarris
    Aug 21, 2013 at 13:13
  • 1
    You too: $USER is easier ;-) (it will automatically transform to the current user)
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 21, 2013 at 15:06
  • Or $HOME too.
    – user423626
    May 7, 2016 at 12:56
5

To answer your question mentioned in the quoted article:

The directory format is like this:

/
    home
        <username>
            Desktop
            Documents
            ...

so your command should be

cd /home/$USER/Desktop

To learn the directory structure, I'd suggest opening up the Home Folder app from the launcher on the left, and going to Computer and just exploring for a while. You won't be able to break anything outside of your home folder.

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  • 2
    $USER is easier ;-) (it will automatically transform to the current user)
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 21, 2013 at 15:05
5

Because I haven't seen it mentioned yet, it should be noted that all directory names in Ubuntu (Linux) are case-sensitive. So even if you were in your correct home directory, executing a cd desktop should and will fail. If you look at @iBelieve's post, you can see that the Desktop directory starts with a capital 'D'. To get there, you will need to specify the correct case.

cd Desktop

To help you in the future, take a look at this Ubuntu help wiki page on using the terminal.

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The following bash builtin commands are equivalent and they change the current working directory to your Desktop directory from your user home directory:

cd ~/Desktop               # my favorite

cd ~; cd Desktop

cd ~ && cd Desktop

cd $HOME/Desktop

cd /home/$USER/Desktop

cd /home/username/Desktop  # where 'username' is your user name

cd $CDPATH && cd Desktop

cd `locate -b '\Desktop'`

cd $(locate -b '\Desktop')
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