An important note of caution

Because Bash and the Linux shell are so powerful, you need to be cautious what commands you enter.

Running the wrong command (or the right command in the wrong place) can irretrievablly delete your personal data or allow your computer to be compromised.

Make sure you understand commands before you type them or copy and paste them to your machine.

As this article helpfully illustrates, you should not blindly copy and paste commands from the internet into your terminal.

Even if the command looks innocent, websites can overwrite what you are trying to copy with something dangerous.

If you need to copy and paste, first paste it into a text program and examine the command there. Try to understand what the command does before entering it on your machine.