Linux Basic Commands

Before we go on to the list of commands, you need to open the command line first. If you
are still unsure about the command-line interface, check out this CLI tutorial.
Although the steps may differ depending on the distribution that you’re using, you can
usually find the command line in the Utilities section.
Here is a list of basic Linux commands:

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 (/). An example of an absolute path
is /home/username.

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.
Let’s say you’re in /home/username/Documents and you want to go to Photos, a
subdirectory of Documents. To do so, simply type the following command: cd Photos.
Another scenario is if you want to switch to a completely new directory, for
example,/home/username/Movies. In this case, you have to type cd followed by the
directory’s absolute path: cd /home/username/Movies.
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

On a side note, Linux’s shell is case sensitive. So, you have to type the name’s directory
exactly as it is.
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.

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

Bonus Tips and Tricks

Use the clear command to clean out the terminal if it is getting cluttered with too many past
commands.
Try the TAB button to autofill what you are typing. For example, if you need to type
Documents, begin to type a command (let’s go with cd Docu, then hit the TAB key) and the
terminal will fill in the rest, showing you cd Documents.
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+Z are used to stop any command that is currently working. Ctrl+C will
stop and terminate the command, while Ctrl+Z will simply pause the command.
If you accidental freeze your terminal by using Ctrl+S, simply undo this with the
unfreeze Ctrl+Q.
Ctrl+A moves you to the beginning of the line while Ctrl+E moves you to the end.
You can run multiple commands in one single command by using the “;” to separate them.
For example Command1; Command2; Command3. Or use && if you only want the next
command to run when the first one is successful.

In general, chmod commands take the form:

chmod options permissions file name

If no options are specified, chmod modifies the permissions of the file

specified by file name to the permissions specified by permissions.

permissions defines the permissions for the owner of the file (the
"user"), members of the group who owns the file (the "group"), and
anyone else ("others"). There are two ways to represent these
permissions: with symbols (alphanumeric characters), or
with octal numbers (the digits 0 through 7).

Let's say you are the owner of a file named myfile, and you want to
set its permissions so that:

1. the user can read, write, and execute it;

2. members of your group can read and execute it; and

3. others may only read it.

This command does the trick:

chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=r myfile

This example uses symbolic permissions notation. The letters u, g,

and o stand for "user", "group", and "other". The equals sign ("=")
means "set the permissions exactly like this," and the letters "r", "w",
and "x" stand for "read", "write", and "execute", respectively. The
commas separate the different classes of permissions, and there are
no spaces between them.

Here is the equivalent command using octal permissions notation:

chmod 754 myfile

Here the digits 7, 5, and 4 each individually represent the permissions

for the user, group, and others, in that order. Each digit is a
combination of the numbers 4, 2, 1, and 0:

• 4 stands for "read",

• 2 stands for "write",
• 1 stands for "execute", and
• 0 stands for "no permission."

So 7 is the combination of permissions 4+2+1 (read, write, and

execute), 5 is 4+0+1 (read, no write, and execute),
and 4 is 4+0+0 (read, no write, and no execute).

Syntax
chmod [OPTION]... MODE[,MODE]... FILE...

chmod [OPTION]... OCTAL-MODE FILE...

chmod [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

Examples
chmod 644 file.htm

Set the permissions of file.htm to "owner can read and write; group
can read only; others can read only".

chmod -R 755 myfiles

Recursively (-R) Change the permissions of the directory myfiles, and

all folders and files it contains, to mode 755. User can read, write, and
execute; group members and other users can read and execute, but
cannot write.

chmod u=rw example.jpg

Change the permissions for the owner of example.jpg so that the

owner may read and write the file. Do not change the permissions for
the group, or for others.

chmod u+s comphope.txt

Set the "Set-User-ID" bit of comphope.txt, so that anyone who

attempts to access that file does so as if they are the owner of the file.

chmod u-s comphope.txt

The opposite of the command above; un-sets the SUID bit.

chmod 755 file.cgi

Set the permissions of file.cgi to "read, write, and execute by owner"

and "read and execute by the group and everyone else".
chmod 666 file.txt

Set the permission of file.txt to "read and write by everyone.".

chmod a=rw file.txt

Accomplishes the same thing as the command above, using symbolic

notation.

Related commands
chown — Change the ownership of files or directories.
getfacl — Display file access control lists.
ls — List the contents of a directory or directories.