Here, we list the most important Linux commands every user should know
1. pwd command
Use the
pwd command to find out the path of the current working directory
(folder) you’re in. The command will return an absolute (full) path,
which is basically a path of all the directories that starts with a
forward slash (/).
2. cd command
To
navigate through the Linux files and directories, use the cd command.
It requires either the full path or the name of the directory, depending
on the current working directory that you’re in.
There are some shortcuts to help you navigate quickly:
cd .. (with two dots) to move one directory up
cd to go straight to the home folder
cd- (with a hyphen) to move to your previous directory
3. ls command
The
ls command is used to view the contents of a directory. By default,
this command will display the contents of your current working
directory.
If you want to see the content of other directories, type
ls and then the directory’s path. For example, enter ls
/home/username/Documents to view the content of Documents.
There are variations you can use with the ls command:
ls -R will list all the files in the sub-directories as well
ls -a will show the hidden files
ls -al will list the files and directories with detailed information like the permissions, size, owner, etc.
4. cat command
cat
(short for concatenate) is one of the most frequently used commands in
Linux. It is used to list the contents of a file on the standard output
(sdout). To run this command, type cat followed by the file’s name and
its extension. For instance: cat file.txt.
Here are other ways to use the cat command:
cat > filename creates a new file
cat filename1 filename2>filename3 joins two files (1 and 2) and stores the output of them in a new file (3)
to convert a file to upper or lower case use, cat filename | tr a-z A-Z >output.txt
5. cp command
Use
the cp command to copy files from the current directory to a different
directory. For instance, the command cp scenery.jpg
/home/username/Pictures would create a copy of scenery.jpg (from your
current directory) into the Pictures directory.
6. mv command
The primary use of the mv command is to move files, although it can also be used to rename files.
The
arguments in mv are similar to the cp command. You need to type mv, the
file’s name, and the destination’s directory. For example: mv file.txt
/home/username/Documents.
To rename files, the Linux command is mv oldname.ext newname.ext
7. mkdir command
Use mkdir command to make a new directory — if you type mkdir Music it will create a directory called Music.
There are extra mkdir commands as well:
To generate a new directory inside another directory, use this Linux basic command mkdir Music/Newfile
use the p (parents) option to create a directory in between two
existing directories. For example, mkdir -p Music/2020/Newfile will
create the new “2020” file.
8. rmdir command
If you need to delete a directory, use the rmdir command. However, rmdir only allows you to delete empty directories.
9. rm command
The rm
command is used to delete directories and the contents within them. If
you only want to delete the directory — as an alternative to rmdir — use
rm -r.
Note: Be very careful with this command and double-check
which directory you are in. This will delete everything and there is no
undo.
10. touch command
The
touch command allows you to create a blank new file through the Linux
command line. As an example, enter touch
/home/username/Documents/Web.html to create an HTML file entitled Web
under the Documents directory.
11. locate command
You
can use this command to locate a file, just like the search command in
Windows. What’s more, using the -i argument along with this command will
make it case-insensitive, so you can search for a file even if you
don’t remember its exact name.
To search for a file that contains two
or more words, use an asterisk (*). For example, locate -i school*note
command will search for any file that contains the word “school” and
“note”, whether it is uppercase or lowercase.
12. find command
Similar
to the locate command, using find also searches for files and
directories. The difference is, you use the find command to locate files
within a given directory.
As an example, find /home/ -name notes.txt
command will search for a file called notes.txt within the home
directory and its subdirectories.
Other variations when using the find are:
To find files in the current directory use, find . -name notes.txt
To look for directories use, / -type d -name notes. txt
13. grep command
Another
basic Linux command that is undoubtedly helpful for everyday use is
grep. It lets you search through all the text in a given file.
To
illustrate, grep blue notepad.txt will search for the word blue in the
notepad file. Lines that contain the searched word will be displayed
fully.
14. sudo command
Short
for “SuperUser Do”, this command enables you to perform tasks that
require administrative or root permissions. However, it is not advisable
to use this command for daily use because it might be easy for an error
to occur if you did something wrong.
15. df command
Use df
command to get a report on the system’s disk space usage, shown in
percentage and KBs. If you want to see the report in megabytes, type df
-m.
16. du command
If you
want to check how much space a file or a directory takes, the du (Disk
Usage) command is the answer. However, the disk usage summary will show
disk block numbers instead of the usual size format. If you want to see
it in bytes, kilobytes, and megabytes, add the -h argument to the
command line.
17. head command
The
head command is used to view the first lines of any text file. By
default, it will show the first ten lines, but you can change this
number to your liking. For example, if you only want to show the first
five lines, type head -n 5 filename.ext.
18. tail command
This
one has a similar function to the head command, but instead of showing
the first lines, the tail command will display the last ten lines of a
text file. For example, tail -n filename.ext.
19. diff command
Short
for difference, the diff command compares the contents of two files line
by line. After analyzing the files, it will output the lines that do
not match. Programmers often use this command when they need to make
program alterations instead of rewriting the entire source code.
The simplest form of this command is diff file1.ext file2.ext
20. tar command
The
tar command is the most used command to archive multiple files into a
tarball — a common Linux file format that is similar to zip format, with
compression being optional.
This command is quite complex with a
long list of functions such as adding new files into an existing
archive, listing the content of an archive, extracting the content from
an archive, and many more. Check out some practical examples to know
more about other functions.
21. chmod command
chmod
is another Linux command, used to change the read, write, and execute
permissions of files and directories. As this command is rather
complicated, you can read the full tutorial in order to execute it
properly.
22. chown command
In
Linux, all files are owned by a specific user. The chown command enables
you to change or transfer the ownership of a file to the specified
username. For instance, chown linuxuser2 file.ext will make linuxuser2
as the owner of the file.ext.
23. jobs command
jobs command will display all current jobs along with their statuses. A job is basically a process that is started by the shell.
24. kill command
If you
have an unresponsive program, you can terminate it manually by using the
kill command. It will send a certain signal to the misbehaving app and
instructs the app to terminate itself.
There is a total of sixty-four signals that you can use, but people usually only use two signals:
SIGTERM (15) — requests a program to stop running and gives it
some time to save all of its progress. If you don’t specify the signal
when entering the kill command, this signal will be used.
SIGKILL (9) — forces programs to stop immediately. Unsaved progress will be lost.
Besides
knowing the signals, you also need to know the process identification
number (PID) of the program you want to kill. If you don’t know the PID,
simply run the command ps ux.
After knowing what signal you want to use and the PID of the program, enter the following syntax:
kill [signal option] PID.
25. ping command
Use
the ping command to check your connectivity status to a server. For
example, by simply entering ping google.com, the command will check
whether you’re able to connect to Google and also measure the response
time.
summary:
Here, we stated the basic 25 Linux command every user should know.