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In general, I tend to prefer the command line to mousing around in Windows, but one aspect of the command line that I do not like is directory traversal. I seem to spend a lot of time cd-ing around for one reason or another.

Are there any strategies for making it easier to jump around from place to place in the directory structure?

Tyler Durden
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By far the best solution for rapid directory navigation for bash and zsh is to install z - jump around script. I can't live without it.

DESCRIPTION Tracks your most used directories, based on 'frecency'.

After a short learning phase, z will take you to the most 'frecent' directory that matches ALL of the regexes given on the command line, in order.

For example, z foo bar would match /foo/bar but not /bar/foo.

[...]

Frecency is a portmanteau of 'recent' and 'frequency'.

Stéphane Chazelas
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Alxs
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You don't say what environment you are using, but with KDE, I like using Dolphin for visually checking directories.

In addition, I usually have a small terminal window on that desktop, where I can do things like:

find /home/me/bigstore | grep filenamefragment | more

After I find what I want, I might cd there in a terminal window to do my command line magic.

ctrl-alt-delor
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mongo
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    In dolphin there is an integrated terminal, if you change dir in the GUI then it changes in the terminal. In addition in newer dolphin (I am using 4.14.2), then if you change directory in the terminal it will change in the GUI. – ctrl-alt-delor Apr 20 '17 at 15:59
  • Good point, that I wasn't taking advantage of. Thanks. – mongo Apr 20 '17 at 16:11