If you’re new to Linux, don’t worry! There are a few essential commands that can make your journey a lot easier. Commands like ‘ls’ help you see what’s in a directory, ‘cd’ allows you to move into different folders, and ‘pwd’ tells you where you currently are.

To manage files, ‘mkdir’ is used to make new folders, ‘touch’ can create new files, and ‘rm’ helps you delete them. For the system itself, ‘whoami’ tells you your user name, ‘sudo’ lets you perform actions with extra privileges, and ‘reboot’ and ‘poweroff’ are used to restart and shut down the computer. Remember, learning to use the Linux terminal is a bit like learning a new language – it might feel strange at first, but with time and practice, it’ll become second nature.

File System Navigation

Command	Description
ls	List all the files in a directory
ls -l	List all files and their details (owner, mtime, size, etc)
ls -a	List all the files in a directory (including hidden files)
pwd	Show the present working directory
cd	Change directory to some other location
file	View the type of any file

View, Create, Edit, and Delete Files and Directories

Command	Description
mkdir	Create a new directory
touch	Create a new, empty file, or update the modified time of an existing one
cat > file	Create a new file with the text you type after
cat file	View the contents of a
grep	View the contents of a file that match a pattern
nano file	Open a file (or create new one) in nano text editor
vim file	Open a file (or create new one) in vim text editor
rm or rmdir	Remove a file or empty directory
rm -r	Remove a directory that isn’t empty
mv	Move or rename a file or directory
cp	Copy a file or directory
rsync	Synchronize the changes of one directory to another

Search for Files and Directories

Command	Description
locate	Quickly find a file or directory that has been cached
find	Search for a file or directory based on name and other parameters

Basic Administration Commands

Command	Description
whoami	See which user you are currently logged in as
sudo	Execute a command with root permissions
sudo apt install	Install a package on Debian based systems
sudo dnf install	Install a package on Red Hat based systems
sudo apt remove	Remove a package on Debian based systems
sudo dnf remove	Remove a package on Red Hat based systems
reboot	Reboot the system
poweroff	Shut down the system

Hard Drive and Storage Commands

Command	Description
df or df -h	See the current storage usage of mounted partitions
sudo fdisk -l	See information for all attached storage devices
du	See disk usage of a directory’s contents
tree	View the directory structure for a path
mount and umount	Mount and unmount a storage device or ISO file

Compression Commands

Command	Description
tar cf my_dir.tar my_dir	Create an uncompressed tar archive
tar cfz my_dir.tar my_dir	Create a tar archive with gzip compression
gzip file	Compress a file with gzip compression
tar xf file	Extract the contents of any type of tar archive
gunzip file.gz	Decompress a file that has gzip compression

Networking Commands

Command	Description
ip a	Show IP address and other information for all active interfaces
ip r	Show IP address of default gateway
cat /etc/resolv.conf	See what DNS servers your system is configured to use
ping	Send a ping request to a network device
traceroute	Trace the network path taken to a device
ssh	Login to a remote device with SSH

File Permissions and Ownership

Command	Description
chmod	Change the file permissions for a file or directory
chown	Change the owner of a file or directory
chgrp	Change the group of a file or directory

User Management Commands

Command	Description
useradd	Low level utility for adding new user accounts
adduser	High level utility for adding new user accounts
deluser	Delete a user account
usermod	Modify a user account
groupadd	Create a new group
delgroup	Delete a group

System Resource Management Commands

Command	Description
free -m	See how much memory is in use and free
top	See a list of processes and their resource usage
htop	A more human readable and interactive version of top
nice	Start a new process with a specified priority
renice	Change the nice value of a currently running process
ps aux or ps -ef	View all of the currently running processes
kill or killall	Terminate a process
kill -9 or killall -9	Terminate a process with SIGKILL signal
bg	Send a task to the background
fg	Bring a task to the foreground

Environment Variable Commands

Command	Description
printenv or printenv variable_name	List all environment variables on a Linux system, or a specific one
whereis and which	Find where a command in PATH is located
export MY_SITE="linuxconfig.org"	Set a temporary environment variable
echo $VARIABLE	Display the value of a variable
unset	Remove a variable

Kernel Information and Module Management

Command	Description
uname -a	Output detailed information about your kernel version and architecture
lsmod	Find what modules are currently loaded
modinfo module_name	Get information about any particular module
modprobe --remove module_name	Remove a module
modprobe module_name	Load a module into the kernel

Hardware Information Commands

Command	Description
lspci	See general information about host bridge, VGA, ethernet, USB, SATA controllers, etc.
dmidecode	See information about BIOS, motherboard, chassis, etc.
cat /proc/cpuinfo	Retrieve processor type, socket, speed, configured flags, etc.
x86info or x86info -a	See information about the CPU
cat /proc/meminfo	See detailed information about system RAM
lshw	List all hardware components and see their configuration details
lshw -C memory -short	Detect number of RAM slots used, speed, and size
hwinfo	List details for all hardware, including device files and configuration
biosdecode	Get some general information about your system’s BIOS
dmidecode -s bios-vendor	Retrieve the name of your BIOS vendor
lsusb	Get a list of USB devices plugged into your system
ls -la /dev/disk/by-id/usb-*	Retrieve a list of USB device files
hdparm -I /dev/sdx	Get info on hard drive make, model, serial, firmware, and configuration
hdparm -tT /dev/sdx	Show the speed of an installed hard drive (cached and buffered reads)
wodim --devices	Locate CD or DVD device file