There is one considerable downside to aliases. If you were to log out of your machine, all the custom aliases you've created would be wiped out. Aliases that you create do not survive once your session has ended. Therefore, if you would like to make an alias or two (or many) permanent, there's another step in the process.

There are many ways to make aliases permanent, but the generally accepted method (which is possibly the easiest) is to edit your .bashrc file and add the aliases to it.

Before we continue with the concept of making aliases permanent, the concept of Bash configuration files should be explained. The .bashrc file is one of several files used by Bash (the Linux shell) for you to store various customizations. There are several of these configuration files, each with a specific purpose, and each is read by the system at a specific time.

In your home directory, one or several of these configuration files may be present. To see which ones you have in your...