I’ve been diving into Ubuntu lately and getting the hang of the command line, but I keep hitting a snag with something pretty basic. You know how in Windows, you can just open the cmd prompt and type in a quick command to get the date and time? Well, I tried to do this in Ubuntu, and I’m kind of lost.

I mean, I know there are a ton of commands out there, and I press the up arrow half the time to recall what I wrote last, but I’m really just looking for a way to quickly check the current date and time from the terminal. I’ve spent some time searching, and I came across a few commands, but it’s all a bit overwhelming. I tried a couple of them, but either they don’t return what I want, or I just end up getting an error message that makes no sense to me.

What I really want is something that’s straightforward. Like, I’m imagining a single command that I can type in, hit enter, and boom! There it is—the current date and time, nice and clear. I mean, I’m sure there are multiple ways to go about it, but I don’t want to wade through a bunch of complicated stuff. Sometimes, it feels like you need a degree just to get your current time and date in Linux!

So I’m asking for a little help here. What’s the simplest command to get the current date and time in Ubuntu from the terminal? And while you’re at it, if you have any tips or tricks for understanding more about the terminal, I’d love to hear those too. I’m in this for the long haul, and mastering the command line feels like a rite of passage! Plus, it’s really cool when you can impress friends with a few slick command-line moves. Help a newbie out!