Overview of 157 Linux Basic Commands

People who don’t know what Linux is sometimes ask us if it’s a program that runs on Microsoft Windows. When we tell them that Linux is, itself, an operating system like Windows and that they can remove (or never purchase) Windows, We sometimes get a surprised reaction: “A PC can run with nothing from Microsoft on it?”

In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki, Finland, started work on a UNIX-like kernel because he wanted to be able to use the same kind of operating system on his home PC that he used at school. At the time, Linus was using Minix, but he wanted to go beyond what the Minix standards permitted.

As noted earlier, Linus announced the first public version of the Linux kernel to the comp.os.minix newsgroup on August 25, 1991, although Linus guesses that the first version didn’t actually come out until mid-September of that year.

Here are the list of Linux basic commands:

S.No	Command	Explanation
1	alias	Allows you to set aliases and view the current aliases.
2	awk	Search for a pattern within a file.
3	alien	Converts .tgz and rpm’s to .deb format.
4	banner	Prints characters as a poster.
5	badblocks	Searches a device for bad blocks.
6	biff	Turns mail notification on and off.
7	bg	Move a job running in the foreground to the background.
8	bzip2	Used to compress and decompress files. Similar to gzip.
9	cardctl	Used to control PCMCIA cards.
10	cfdisk	Used to partition a hard disk.
11	cp	Copy
12	chattr	Changes the attributes of a file or folder.
13	chroot	Change the root directory for a command.
14	chmod	Used to change permissions on a directory or file.
15	chown	Used to change the owner of a file or directory.
16	chgrp	Used to change the group a file belongs to.
17	clear	Clears the screen
18	cpio	Copies file.
19	cat	Displays the content of a file
20	chpasswd	Used to change a large number of passwords at once.
21	cd	Changes directories.
22	chage	Sets password aging parameters.
23	cal	Displays a calendar.
24	cron	Used to execute commands at a certain time.
25	crontab	Allows you to view or edit the current cron jobs.
26	dselect	A graphical front end for dpkg.
27	dpkg	Installs packages on debain distro’s.
28	date	Prints current date to the screen
29	du	Lists disk usage in a directory.
30	df	Reports disk usage information. df -h
31	dmesg	Used to view the kernel boot file.
32	dump	Used for backing up.
33	edquota	Sets quotas for specific users.
34	env	Lists current environment variables.
35	fdisk	Used to create/edit/delete partitions.
36	fsck	Checks a file system for consistency.
37	fg	Used to send jobs to the background.
38	fuser	Checks to see what processes and users have open files.
39	find	Searches for a file.
40	free	Will show total memory, used memory, and free memory.
41	gcc	Used to compile C, Assembler, and Preprocessed C source.
42	gpasswd	Used to set a password for a group.
43	grep	Used to search through a file for a specified pattern.
44	getty	Set terminal type, modes, speed, and line discipline
45	groupadd	Create new group account.
46	groupdel	Deletes a group.
47	groupmod	Used to modify a group.
48	groups	Shows what groups a user is part of.
49	gunzip	Uncompress files compressed by gzip.
50	head	Displays the first 10 lines of a file to the screen.
51	hdparm	Gets disk information.
52	history	Lists recently executed commands.
53	host	Used to get DNS info.
54	htpasswd	Allows you to set usernames and passwords for your websever.
55	id	Display information about yourself or another user.
56	insmod	Installs modules.
57	init	Used to change run levels.
58	isapnp	Sets up ISA cards.
59	icmpinfo	Intercept and interpret ICMP packets
60	jobs	Used to show jobs running in the background.
61	join	Join lines of two sorted.
62	kill	Used to kill a process.
63	killall	Kill processes by command name.
64	kernelcfg	A graphical application configures Linux.
65	klogd	Control which kernel messages.
66	linuxconf	A command line GUI which lets you configure your linux.
67	lpc	Used to control a line printer.
68	lpq	View the print spool queue.
69	lpr	Send files to the printer spool queue.
70	ls	Displays a directories contents.
71	ln	Used to create hard and symbolic links.
72	less	Display the contents of a file.
73	locate	Search for a file or directory.
74	ldd	Shows what shared libraries a program is dependent on.
75	ldconfig	Used to configure/view shared libraries.
76	last	Lists logins and reboots.
77	lastlog	Print the last login times for system accounts.
78	lsmod	Lists loaded modules.
79	lsattr	Lists the attributes for a file or folder.
80	logrotate	Used to manipulate log files.
81	mount	Used by itself, reports the currently mounted files.
82	modinfo	Give info about the module.
83	modprobe	Queries modules.
84	man	Displays the Man page for a given command.
85	mesg	Used to allow/not allow ‘write’.
86	manpath	Attempts to determine the path to a man page.
87	mail	Used to send and receive mail.
88	mkdir	Make directory
89	mke2fs	Used to format a partition with the Ext2 file system.
90	mv	Move/Rename
91	merge	Merge multiple files together.
92	more	Lets you page through text one screen full at a time.
93	minicom	Great utility for troublshooting a modem.
94	mkbootdisk	Used to make a boot disk.
95	ntsysv	Used to select what services should automatically start.
96	nice	Used to set process priorities.
97	nslookup	Used to get DNS info from name servers.
98	netstat	Shows active sockets.
99	ps	Displays current processes
100	ping	Used to test connectivity between two hosts.
101	pwd	Present Working Directory
102	pwconv	Used to set up the /etc/shadow file.
103	pnpdump	Determines settings for existing ISA cards.
104	quota	Allows users to view their own disk quotas.
105	quotaon	Turns on disk quotas for the system.
106	quotaoff	Turns off disk quotas for the system.
107	repquota	Provides reports of disk usage for various users.
108	rmmod	Removes modules.
109	rm	Remove
110	rmdir	Remove directory
111	rpm	(RedHat flavors only) Used to install RPM’s
112	rpcinfo	Used to see what rpc services are available.
113	route	Used to view/change routes between you and other hosts.
114	smbclient	Used to connect to Windows shares or Samba.
115	smbadduser	Maps linux user names to Windows NT user names.
116	smbpasswd	Used to update the smbpasswd file with new accounts.
117	set	Used to read and write variables.
118	setquota	Used to set disk quotas.
119	sort	Sorts lines in a file by alphabetical order.
120	sndconfig	Used to probe and configure a sound card.
121	su	Change to Super User (root).
122	spell	Checks for spelling errors in a file.
123	startx	Start the X Server (GUI)
124	shutdown	Shutdown machine
125	suspend	Places a shell in the background.
126	showmount	Shows mount information for an NFS server.
127	swapon	Turns on the swapfile.
128	swapoff	Turns off the swapfile.
129	testparm	Used to troubleshoot Samba.
130	tar	Used to compress multiple files.
131	timeconfig	Used to set the timezone on your machine.
132	tac	View a file from the last line up.
133	touch	Creates an empty file.
134	tail	Displays the last 10 lines of a file to the screen.
135	talk	Used to chat with another user on the same machine.
136	tr	Converts one set of characters to another.
137	traceroute	Used to track the path a packet takes to a host.
138	top	Shows information about the most CPU-intensive Apps.
139	useradd	Add a user.
140	usermod	Modify a user.
141	userdel	Delete a user.
142	umount	Removes a device from the filesystem.
143	updatedb	Updates the locate database.
144	uname	Determines OS name, version and machine name.
145	vmstat	Lists information on memory usage.
146	vi	A text editor
147	whereis	Finds documentation files.
148	who	Tells you who is logged into your server.
149	whoami	Tells you your user information.
150	wc	Print the number of bytes, words, and lines in files.
151	which	Finds the full path for a command.
152	write	Used to send a message to another user.
153	whois	Used to query servers for info on.
154	wall	Writes a message to all logged in users.
155	xman	Graphical interface for man pages.
156	xf86config	Used to configure X.
157	zcat	Read files that have been compressed with gzip.

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