Top 50 Linux Commands You Must Know
2 min readJul 21, 2022
- ls — view contents of directory (list)
- pwd — path of the current directory
- cd — change directory
- mkdir — make new directory
- mv — move files / rename files
- cp — copy files
- rm — remove files
- touch — create blank new file
- rmdir — delete directory
- cat — list content of file to terminal
- clear — clear terminal window
- echo — move data into a file
- less — Shows file’s contents one screen at a time
- man — show manual of Linux commands
- sudo — enables you to perform tasks that require administrative or root permissions
- top — task manager in terminal
- tar — used to archive multiple files into a tarball
- grep — used to searching words in specific files
- head — view first lines of any text file
- tail — view last lines of any text file
- diff — compares the contents of two files line by line
- kill — used for killing unresponsive program
- jobs — display all current jobs along with their statuses
- sort — is a command line utility for sorting lines of text files
- df — info about system disk
- du — check how much space a file or directory takes
- zip — to compress your files into a zip archive
- unzip — to extract the zipped files from a zip archive
- ssh — a secure encrypted connection between two hosts over and insecure network
- cal — shows calendar
- apt — command line tool for interaction with packaging system
- alias — custom shortcuts used to represent a command
- w — current user info
- whereis — used to locate the binary, source, manual page files
- whatis — used to get one-line man page description
- useradd — used to create a new user
- passwd — used to changing password of current user
- whoami — print current user
- uptime — print current time when machine starts
- free — print free disk space info
- history — print used commands history
- uname — print detailed information about your Linux system
- ping — to check connectivity status to a server
- chmod — to change permissions of files and directories
- chown — to change ownership of files and directories
- find — using find searches for files and directories
- locate — used to locate a file, just like the search command in Windows
- ifconfig — print ip address stuff
- ip a — similar to ifconfig but shortest print
- finger — gives you a short dump of info about a user
