So, you have installed your favorite linux distro and you are sitting in front of it. Probably you must have heard a lot of frightening things about its console. Here you will see some basic linux commands which will help you to get familiar with linux command line. So let's continue with the linux commands cheatsheet.
A
alias - Create your own name for a command
arch - To print machine architecture
ash - Ash command interpreter (shell)
awk - Pattern scanning and processing language
ac - User connection statistics
B
basename - Remove directory and suffix from a file name
bash - GNU Bourne-Again Shell
bsh - Command interpreter (Shell)
bc - Command line calculator
bunzip2 - Unzip .bz2 files
C
cat - Concatenate a file print it to the screen
chgrp - Change the group designation of a file
chmod - Change file permissions
chown - Change the owner of a file
cjpeg - Compress an image file to a JPEG file
clear - Clear terminal screen (command line)
comm - Compare two sorted files
cp - Copy command
cpio - Copy files to and from archives
cut - Print selected parts of lines to standard output
D
date - Display date and time
dc - Command line calculator
df - Disk space free
diff - Difference between two files
diff3 - Difference between 3 files
dig - Interrogate DNS name servers
djpeg - Decompress a JPEG file to an image file
dmesg - Print or control the kernel ring buffer (print out bootup messages)
doexec - Run an executable with an arbitrary argv
domainname- Show or set the system's NIS/YP domain name
dos2unix - Converts plain text files in DOS/MAC format to UNIX format
du - Show disk useage
dumpkeys - Write keyboard driver's translation tables to std output
E
echo - Display a line of text
ed - Line-oriented text editor
egrep - Print lines matching a pattern
elinks - A text mode WWW browser
env - Dislay the path
ex - Start Vim in ex mode
eject - Eject media from device
F
factor - Display prime factors of a number
false - Exit with a status code indicating failure
fdisk - Disk usage
fgrep - Variant of grep
find - Find a file
finger - Displays information about the system users
fixps - Try to fix common PostScript problems that break postprocessing
free - Display free memory
G
grep - Search for a pattern using regular expression
gtar - GNU version of the archiving utility tar.
gunzip - Unzip .gz files
gzip - Compress files
H
halt - Stop the system
hdparm - Get/set harddisk parameters
head - Print the first 10 lines of a file to standard output
hostname - Show or set the system's host name
history - Display entire command history
HISTSIZE - Change history size
httpd - Apache Hypertext Transfer Protocol Server
I -
identify - It describes the format and characteristics of image files.
id - Print information for username, or the current user
ifconfig - Display network and hardware addresses
igawk - Gawk with include files
ipcalc - Calculate IP information for a host
K
kbd_mode - Report or set the keyboard mode
kill - Terminate a process
L
last - Show list of last logged in users
lastlog - reports the log of all users or of a given user
link - Call the link function to create a link to a file
links - See elinks
ln - Create a link to the specified TARGET with optional LINK_NAME
loadkeys - Load keyboard translation tables
locate - Displays the location of the file
login - Sign in
look - Displays any lines in file which contain "string" as a prefix.
ls - List directory contents
lsmod - List loaded kernel modules
lynx - Command to start the Lynx browser
M
mac2unix - Converts plain text files in DOS/MAC format to UNIX format
mail - A mail processing system, which has a command syntax like ed
man - Display a particular manual entry
manweb - Manweb is part of the Netpbm package
mdu - Display the amount of space occupied by an MSDOS directory
mkdir - Create a directory
mkfs - Make a filesystem on a drive
mknod - Make block or character special files
mktemp - Make temporary filename (unique)
more - Page through text one screenful at a time.
mount - Mount a filesystem/device
mt - Control magnetic tape drive operation
mv - Move and / or rename files
N
namei - Follow a pathname until a terminal point is found
nano - An enhanced free Pico clone
nc - arbitrary TCP and UDP connections and listens
ncftp - Browser program for the File Transfer Protocol
nedit-nc - nedit-nc is the client interface to the NEdit text editor
netstat - Display verbose info about network processes and ports
nice - Run a command with modified priority
nslookup - query internet domain name servers
nisdomainname - Show or set system's NIS/YP domain name
P
paste - Merge lines of files
pdf2dsc - Generate a PostScript page list of a PDF document
pdf2ps - Convert PDF file "input.pdf" to PostScript(tm) in "output.ps"
pdfinfo - Print contents of the 'Info' dictionary (plus some other useful information) from a PDF file
pdftotext - Convert pdf files to plain text
perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
pgawk - The profiling version of gawk
pico - Text editor that comes with Pine (from the University of Washington)
pine - Email program used by The University of Washington
ping6 - Ping
ping - Send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to network hosts
pinky - A lightweight 'finger' program;
pr - Format for printing
ps - Processes running
ps2ascii - Ghostscript translator from PostScript or PDF to ASCII
ps2epsi - Generate conforming Encapsulated PostScript
ps2frag - Obsolete shell script for the PSfrag system
ps2pdf12 - Convert PostScript to PDF 1.2 (Acrobat 3 and later compatible) using ghostscript
ps2pdf13 - Convert PostScript to PDF 1.3 (Acrobat 4 and later compatible) using ghostscript
ps2pdf14 - Use ps2pdfwr: Convert PostScript to PDF without specifying Compatibility Level, using ghostscript
ps2pdf - Convert PostScript to PDF using ghostscript
ps2pdfwr - Convert PostScript to PDF without specifying Compatibility Level, using ghostscript
ps2pk - Creates a TeX pkfont from a type1 PostScript font
ps2ps - ps2ps uses gs to convert PostScript(tm) file "input.ps" to simpler and (usually) faster PostScript in "output.ps"
psbook - Rearranges pages from a PostScript document into "signatures" for printing books or booklets
pwd - Print Working Directory
Q
quota - Display disk usage and limits
R
resize - Xterm window size
readelf - Displays information about ELF files
reboot - Stop the system, poweroff, reboot
red - red is a restricted ed: it can only edit files in the current directory and cannot execute shell commands
rename - Rename files
rmdir - Remove a directory
rm - Remove files or directories
rpm - rpm command options
rundig - Sample script to create a search database for ht://Dig
rview - The GUI version of Vim in easy mode with restrictions
rvi - Vi / Vim editor
S
sed - Stream editor
setfont - Load EGA/VGA console screen font
sfdisk - Modified fdisk program
sftp - Secure file transfer protocol (ftp)
sh - Shell (BASH)
shred - Safely remove data from disk drive
sleep - Delay for a specified amount of time
slocate - Security Enhanced version of the GNU Locate
sort - Sort lines of a text file
ssh - Secure shell connection command
stty - change and print terminal line settings
su - switch user
switchdesk- Graphical and text mode interface for choosing desktop environment
sync - flush the file system buffers
ssh - Secure shell connection command
T
tail - Print the last 10 Lines of a file standard output
tar - Create an Archive
tcsh - Enhanced completely compatible version of the Berkeley UNIX C shell, csh
tee - Copy standard input to each file, and also to standard output
telnet - User interface to the telnet protocol
time - Run the specified program command with the given arguments
touch - Creating empty files
tracepath6- See tracepath
tracepath - Trace path to a network host discovering MTU along this path
traceroute6-See traceroute
traceroute- Print the route packets take to network host
tree - Display file tree
true - Exit with a status code indicating success
tty - Print the current terminal
U
umask - File creation mask
umount - Detache file system(s) mentioned from file hierarchy
uname - Print system information ( kernel version )
unicode_start- Put keyboard and console into Unicode (UTF-8) mode
unicode_stop - Undo the effect of unicode_start
unlink - Call the unlink function to remove the specified file
uniq - Remove duplicate lines from sorted file
updatedb - Update the slocate database
untar - Unarchive a file
unzip - Unzip .zip files
useradd - Add a new user
users - Output who is currently logged in according to system records
usleep - Sleep a given number of microseconds. default is 1
V
view - Start vim in read-only mode
vi - Start the vi editor
vim - Start the vim editor
vigr - Edit the password or group files
visudo - edit the sudoers file
W
w - who is logged on and what they are doing
wc - Word count of a file
wget - Non-interactive download of files from the Web
whatis - Search the whatis database for complete words (command names)
whereis - Locate a command or file
which - Find command path
whoami - Print effective userid
who - show who is logged on
whois - Client for the whois service
X
xinit - Start Xserver
xpdf - Portable Document Format (PDF) file viewer for X windows
xwd - dump an image of an X window
xrandr - Change resolution running Xwindows ( command line )
Xvfb - Virtual framebuffer X server for X Version 11
Xorg - X11R6 X server
Y
ypdomainname - Show or set the system's NIS/YP domain name
yum - Yellowdog Updater Modified
ypbind - Nis binding process
ypserv - Nis Server
Z
zcat - Compress or expand files
zip - Compression and file packaging utility
zdump - Time zone dumper
zenmap - Graphical Nmap frontend and results viewer
zipinfo - List detailed information about a ZIP archive
