Basic Shell Commands

https://itsfoss.com/linux-better-than-windows/
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/7-reasons-why-programmers-should-use-linux/
https://www.smashingrobotics.com/use-linux-with-tools-to-control-your-robot/
https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/linux-commands

1. pwd command
This command shows the path of the current working directory.

2. cd command
This command changes directory with your path input.

3. ls command
The ls command depicts the contents of a directory.
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 test and test2.

5. cp command
Use the cp command to copy files from the current directory to a different directory. For instance,
the command cp logo-white.png /home/fatih/Pictures would create a copy of logo-white.png
(from your current directory Downloads) into the Pictures directory.
 Logo-white.png

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 redtest.txt /home/fatih/Desktop.
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 comand
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.

26. wget command

The Linux command line is super useful — you can even download files from the internet with the
help of the wget command. To do so, simply type wget followed by the download link.

27. uname command

The uname command, short for Unix Name, will print detailed information about your Linux
system like the machine name, operating system, kernel, and so on.

28. top command

As a terminal equivalent to Task Manager in Windows, the top command will display a list of
running processes and how much CPU each process uses. It’s very useful to monitor system
resource usage, especially knowing which process needs to be terminated because it consumes too
many resources.

29. history command

When you’ve been using Linux for a certain period of time, you’ll quickly notice that you can run
hundreds of commands every day. As such, running history command is particularly useful if you
want to review the commands you’ve entered before.

30. man command

Confused about the function of certain Linux commands? Don’t worry, you can easily learn how to
use them right from Linux’s shell by using the man command. For instance, entering man tail will
show the manual instruction of the tail command.

31. echo command

This command is used to move some data into a file. For example, if you want to add the text,
“Hello, my name is John” into a file called name.txt, you would type echo Hello, my name is John
>> name.txt

32. zip, unzip command

Use the zip command to compress your files into a zip archive, and use the unzip command to
extract the zipped files from a zip archive.

33. hostname command

If you want to know the name of your host/network simply type hostname. Adding a -i to the end
will display the IP address of your network.
34. useradd, userdel command
Since Linux is a multi-user system, this means more than one person can interact with the same
system at the same time. useradd is used to create a new user, while passwd is adding a password
to that user’s account. To add a new person named John type, useradd John and then to add his
password type, passwd 123456789.
To remove a user is very similar to adding a new user. To delete the users account type, userdel
UserName