This post outlines a couple of commonly used Linux commands.
man – command used to display manual pages for specific commands (e.g., “man ls”). Man pages are your friend!
ls – similar to the DOS dir command. It lists directory contents. Try “ls -al” for a detailed directory listing.
cd – change directory. “cd ~” will take you to your home directory.
rm – used for deleting files and folders. Similar to the DOS del command.
mv – move or rename a file
cp – copy a file
ps – shows running processes. “ps aux” shows a good amount of info.
startx – Starts X windows if run from the system console (assuming it is configured).
pwd – displays your “present working directory” or current directory.
exit – closes a shell session or logs you out of the console.
./file – executes the file located in the current directory. The current directory is represented by “./”. This is useful when you want to execute a command or script that isn’t located within the system path.
shutdown -r now – reboot the system NOW.
shutdown -h now – halt the system NOW.
vi – starts up a popular but not very user-friendly editor. vi is a very powerful editor but it takes a little getting used to.
df – shows free disk space on all volumes
free – shows free memory. Use the “-m” parameter to show memory in MB.
du – shows directory usage in terms of space for current directory and all subdirectories.
top – shows system processes. Hit “q” to exit.
uptime – shows uptime and system load statistics
cat – concatenate files and print on the standard output. To display a text file on the screen, type “cat filename”
There are many more commands; too many to cover here. However, the commands listed above should be enough to allow you to navigate around a linux system.
A couple more notes:
- “.” represents the current directory.
- “..” represents the parent directory (e.g., “cd ../images” will change directory into the images folder in the parent directory).
- “~” represents your home directory (e.g., /home/jsmith). The “~” can be used in path representations such as “cd ~/public_html” which is the same as typing “cd /home/jsmith/public_html”.
