most of the programs you write in your text editor you'll run directly from the editorbut sometimes it' useful to run programs from terminal instead for exampleyou might want to run an existing program without opening it for editing you can do this on any system with python installed if you know how to access the directory where you've stored your program file to try thismake sure you've saved the hello_world py file in the python_work folder on your desktop on linux and os running python program from terminal session is the same on linux and os the terminal command cdfor change directoryis used to navigate through your file system in terminal session the command lsfor listshows you all the nonhidden files that exist in the current directory open new terminal window and issue the following commands to run hello_world pyu ~cd desktop/python_workv ~/desktop/python_workls hello_world py ~/desktop/python_workpython hello_world py hello python worldat we use the cd command to navigate to the python_work folderwhich is in the desktop folder nextwe use the ls command to make sure hello_world py is in this folder thenwe run the file using the command python hello_world py it' that simple you just use the python (or python command to run python programs on windows the terminal command cdfor change directoryis used to navigate through your file system in command window the command dirfor directoryshows you all the files that exist in the current directory open new terminal window and issue the following commands to run hello_world pyu :\cd desktop\python_work :\desktop\python_workdir hello_world py :\desktop\python_workpython hello_world py hello python worldat we use the cd command to navigate to the python_work folderwhich is in the desktop folder nextwe use the dir command to make sure hello_world py is in this folder thenwe run the file using the command python hello_world py