powershell_basic_usage.md

Using PowerShell with Basic Linux Knowledge

This short guide helps users familiar with Linux quickly adapt to PowerShell. While the syntax differs slightly, the underlying logic of navigating directories, managing files, and running scripts remains the same. For a full command comparison, see Microsoft’s table of basic powershell commands.

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## Navigation & File Operations

PowerShell and Linux both use a hierarchical filesystem. The key difference is path separators (\ in PowerShell vs / in Linux) and drive letters (e.g. C:\, D:\).

Task	Linux Command	PowerShell Command
Show current directory	pwd	pwd
List files	ls	dir or ls
Change directory	cd /path/to/folder	cd C:\path\to\folder
Move up one directory	cd ..	cd ..
Copy	cp file file_copy	cp .\file .\file_copy
Move	mv file folder/	Move-Item .\file .\folder\
Remove	rm file	rm .\file
Create a folder	mkdir folder	mkdir folder
View a file	cat file	Get-Content .\file or cat .\file
Show first 10 lines	head -10 file	Get-Content file -TotalCount 10
Show last 10 lines	tail -10 file	Get-Content file -Tail 10
Search content in file	grep text file	Select-String "text" file

Environment and Conda Usage

Conda commands are mostly identical.

# Initialise
conda init powershell

# List all packages
conda list

# List all environments
conda env list

# Activate an environment
conda activate my_env

# Deactivate environment
conda deactivate

Running a Python Script

Running Python scripts works the same way as in Linux.

# Run a Python script
python script_name.py

# Run interactively
python