Top 100 linux commands

Posted on: September 17, 2024 /
Categories: Internet

Here’s a comprehensive list of 100 essential Linux commands that cover a broad range of tasks. This list includes commands for file manipulation, system monitoring, networking, package management, and more:

File and Directory Management

  1. ls – List directory contents
  2. cd – Change directory
  3. pwd – Print working directory
  4. mkdir – Make directories
  5. rmdir – Remove empty directories
  6. rm – Remove files or directories
  7. cp – Copy files or directories
  8. mv – Move or rename files or directories
  9. touch – Change file timestamps or create empty files
  10. find – Search for files in a directory hierarchy
  11. locate – Find files by name
  12. updatedb – Update the database for locate
  13. diff – Compare files line by line
  14. file – Determine file type
  15. chmod – Change file modes or Access Control Lists
  16. chown – Change file owner and group
  17. chgrp – Change group ownership
  18. ln – Create hard and symbolic links

Text Processing

  1. cat – Concatenate and display files
  2. tac – Concatenate and display files in reverse
  3. more – View file contents page by page
  4. less – View file contents page by page (with backward movement)
  5. head – Output the first part of files
  6. tail – Output the last part of files
  7. grep – Search text using patterns
  8. sed – Stream editor for filtering and transforming text
  9. awk – Pattern scanning and processing language
  10. cut – Remove sections from each line of files
  11. paste – Merge lines of files
  12. sort – Sort lines of text files
  13. uniq – Report or omit repeated lines
  14. wc – Print newline, word, and byte counts for each file
  15. tr – Translate or delete characters
  16. xargs – Build and execute command lines from standard input

System Monitoring and Management

  1. top – Display Linux tasks
  2. htop – Interactive process viewer (requires installation)
  3. ps – Report process status
  4. df – Report file system disk space usage
  5. du – Estimate file space usage
  6. free – Display amount of free and used memory
  7. uptime – Tell how long the system has been running
  8. vmstat – Report virtual memory statistics
  9. iostat – Report CPU and I/O statistics
  10. lsof – List open files
  11. netstat – Print network connections, routing tables, interface statistics
  12. ss – Utility to investigate sockets
  13. dmesg – Print or control the kernel ring buffer
  14. systemctl – Control the systemd system and service manager
  15. journalctl – Query and display messages from the journal
  16. shutdown – Bring the system down
  17. reboot – Reboot the system

Networking

  1. ping – Send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to network hosts
  2. ifconfig – Configure a network interface (deprecated, use ip)
  3. ip – Show/manipulate routing, devices, policy routing, and tunnels
  4. netcat (or nc) – Read and write data across network connections
  5. wget – Non-interactive network downloader
  6. curl – Transfer data from or to a server
  7. ssh – OpenSSH SSH client (remote login program)
  8. scp – Secure copy (remote file copy program)
  9. ftp – File Transfer Protocol client
  10. sftp – Secure File Transfer Protocol client
  11. traceroute – Print the route packets take to the network host
  12. host – DNS lookup utility
  13. dig – DNS lookup
  14. whois – Whois query program

Package Management

  1. apt-get – APT package handling utility (Debian-based systems)
  2. apt – High-level package management command-line interface (Debian-based)
  3. yum – Package manager for RPM-based distributions (e.g., CentOS, RHEL)
  4. dnf – Package manager for RPM-based distributions (successor to yum)
  5. rpm – RPM package manager
  6. pacman – Package manager for Arch Linux
  7. zypper – Command-line interface of ZYpp package manager (openSUSE)
  8. snap – Package management system that allows installing snaps
  9. flatpak – System for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications

Disk Management

  1. fdisk – Partition table manipulator for Linux
  2. parted – A partition manipulation program
  3. mkfs – Build a Linux file system
  4. fsck – File system consistency check and repair
  5. mount – Mount a file system
  6. umount – Unmount file systems
  7. blkid – Locate/print block device attributes
  8. lsblk – List information about block devices

User Management

  1. useradd – Create a new user or update default new user information
  2. usermod – Modify a user account
  3. userdel – Delete a user account and related files
  4. passwd – Change user password
  5. groupadd – Create a new group
  6. groupdel – Delete a group
  7. groups – Show which groups a user belongs to
  8. id – Print user and group information

Process Management

  1. kill – Send a signal to a process
  2. killall – Kill processes by name
  3. pkill – Send signals to processes based on name and other attributes
  4. nohup – Run a command immune to hangups
  5. jobs – List active jobs
  6. fg – Bring a job to the foreground
  7. bg – Resume a stopped job in the background

System Information

  1. uname – Print system information
  2. hostname – Show or set the system’s hostname
  3. date – Display or set the system date and time

These commands provide a solid foundation for managing and interacting with a Linux system.