How to Copy Files in Linux

Using the Command Line

1. Open Terminal. Click or double-click the Terminal app icon, which usually resembles a black box with a white ">_" on it.

   1. You can also just press Alt+Ctrl+T to open Terminal on most Linux versions.

2. Go to the proper directory. Type in cd path where "path" is the address of the folder in which the file you want to copy is located, then press ↵ Enter.

   1. For example, to tell Terminal to look for your file in the Desktop folder, you would type cd Desktop into Terminal.
   2. Make sure you capitalize the folder's name if necessary.
   3. If attempting to switch to a folder results in an error, you'll need to enter the folder's entire path (e.g., /home/name/Desktop/folder instead of just folder) here.

3. Type in the "copy" tag. This tag is cp with a space after it.

4. Enter a file's name. Type in the name and extension of the file you want to copy after cp and the space, then add a space.

   1. For example, if you want to copy a file named "hello", you would type cp hello into Terminal.
   2. If the file name has an extension on the end of it (e.g., ".desktop"), make sure you include the extension in the file's name when typing it into Terminal.

5. Enter the destination folder. Type in the path for the folder into which you want to copy the file.

   1. For example, if you want to copy "hello" into a folder named "Hi" that's stored in the Documents folder, you would have cp hello /home/name/Documents/Hi (where "name" is your username) typed into Terminal.

6. Press ↵ Enter. Doing so will run your command. Your file will be pasted into the folder you specified.