Common Linux Commands

Linux is an open source operating system that has been available since the mid 1990’s and powers multiple devices from home appliances to smartphones. Linux is comprised of various different distributions such as Ubuntu, CentOS and Linux Mint. Each distro has it’s own take on the desktop and overall user environment for home PC use, however when utilizing Linux for a server you’ll primarily utilize the terminal or shell interface. Like all operating systems Linux has a plethora of different commands that can be utilized from within the shell or terminal interface.

In this article we will list off some of the most common commands with a brief explanation as to what they do, without further ado let’s get started!

What Are Some Common Linux Commands?

Command	Description	Example
ls	List directory contents	ls or ls -lah
cd	Change directory	cd /home
pwd	Print your current working directory	pwd
top	Displays the resources currently being used on your system like a task manager	top -c
df	Display disk space	df -h
du	Show how much disk space a file is taking up	du /home
find	Searches for files with a given pattern	find filename
less	View a file’s contents in a pager format one page at a time	cat filename \| less
clear	Clears the terminal screen	clear
chown	Change ownership of a file	chown username:group filename
chmod	Change permissions of a file or files	chmod 644 /home/filename
cat	Display the contents of a file usually on the monitor	cat filename
grep	Isolate a specific pattern from a file or output	cat filename \| grep pattern
man	Opens up the manual to display helpful information for a specified command	man nameofcommand
mkdir	Creates a new directory	mkdir newfolder
touch	Creates a new file	touch newfile
w	Display who is logged in and what they are up to	w
kill	Kills a specified process	kill -9 pid
mv	Move or rename files/directories	mv oldfile newfile

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What Are Some Common Linux Commands?

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