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Linux commands for beginners: Get started with Linux by learning these essential commands



When I was new to Linux, I had a cheat sheet that hung over my desk to help me remember those commands as I managed my Linux servers. It was called the 101 commands for Linux cheat sheet. As I became more familiar with these commands, I became more proficient with server administration.


Linux commands are executed on Terminal by pressing Enter at the end of the line. You can run commands to perform various tasks, from package installation to user management and file manipulation.




Linux Commands For Beginners



When using sudo, the system will prompt users to authenticate themselves with a password. Then, the Linux system will log a timestamp as a tracker. By default, every root user can run sudo commands for 15 minutes/session.


Concatenate, or cat, is one of the most frequently used Linux commands. It lists, combines, and writes file content to the standard output. To run the cat command, type cat followed by the file name and its extension. For instance:


The ping command is one of the most used basic Linux commands for checking whether a network or a server is reachable. In addition, it is used to troubleshoot various connectivity issues.


With history, the system will list up to 500 previously executed commands, allowing you to reuse them without re-entering. Keep in mind that only users with sudo privileges can execute this command. How this utility runs also depends on which Linux shell you use.


jed has a drop-down menu interface that allows users to perform actions without entering keyboard combinations or commands. Like vi, it has modes to load modules or plugins to write specific texts.


Did you know that you can edit a text file with Linux commands using SSH? Instead of editing a file locally and uploading it via FTP, you can edit the file instantly on your account using the vim or nano command.


This article has discussed 40 common commands, such as apt-get to install a package, nano to manipulate a file, htop to monitor current processes, and ls to view a directory.


The Linux command line is a text interface to your computer. Often referred to as the shell, terminal, console, prompt or various other names, it can give the appearance of being complex and confusing to use. Yet the ability to copy and paste commands from a website, combined with the power and flexibility the command line offers, means that using it may be essential when trying to follow instructions online, including many on this very website!


You might be tempted to just hit the Caps Lock key and use upper case for all your file names. But the vast majority of shell commands are lower case, so you would end up frequently having to turn it on and off as you type. Most seasoned command line users tend to stick primarily to lower case names for their files and directories so that they rarely have to worry about file name clashes, or which case to use for each letter in the name.


In this case, however, we do mean to. The addition of options to our rm or rmdir commands will let us perform dangerous actions without the aid of a safety net! In the case of rmdir we can add a -p switch to tell it to also remove the parent directories. Think of it as the counterpoint to mkdir -p. So if you were to run rmdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3 it would first delete dir3, then dir2, then finally delete dir1. It still follows the normal rmdir rules of only deleting empty directories though, so if there was also a file in dir1, for example, only dir3 and dir2 would get removed.


On a Ubuntu system the first user created when the system is installed is considered to be the superuser. When adding a new user there is an option to create them as an administrator, in which case they will also be able to run superuser commands with sudo. In this screenshot of Ubuntu 18.04 you can see the option at the top of the dialog:


This handbook does not try to cover everything under the sun related to Linux and its commands. It focuses on the small core commands that you will use the 80% or 90% of the time, and tries to simplify the usage of the more complex ones.


While there is a little problem with the commands I listed up to now, in this case using an emacs version from 2007 is not exactly the same as using a version with 12 years of improvements and change.


In this case you will get an error saying env: node: No such file or directory because the node command is not reachable, as the PATH variable used by the shell to look up commands in the common paths is unset.


History command shows all the basic commands in Linux that you have used in the past for the current terminal session. This can help you refer to the old commands you have entered and re-used them in your operations again.


Using Linux/Unix basic commands, installation files in Linux are distributed as packages. But the package contains only the program itself. Any dependent components will have to be installed separately which are usually available as packages themselves.


This is the easiest file editor for beginners, because you can type anywhere, and use the arrow keys to move around.Most of the commands in nano start with ^, which is the Ctrl key. To save a file, see the example below!


When dealing with the Linux operating system, commands are required as inputs to inform or direct a computer program to perform a specific operation. Understanding the most basic Linux commands will allow you to successfully navigate directories, manipulate files, change permissions, display information such as disk space, and more. Obtaining basic knowledge of the most common commands will help you easily execute tasks via the command line.


The shell is the interface between you and Linux. We issue commands through the command line interface which is interpreted and passed on to the kernel for processing. When we log onto the computer the shell will automatically start. It will then monitor the terminal for any commands.


Those are some of the basic commands. There are plenty more where that came from. Hopefully this article has been informative and insightful. The next article will follow up on this one with more information on Linux as well as commands to really get you going.


Everything in Linux is a file. All configurations and settings. This means we can find and work with any settings in a text file. However, we can still use the graphical user interface (GUI). Linux only needs a terminal/shell to work with it. Because everything is in single files, we only need to learn a few short commands to work with these files to create, name, move, or customize them.


Many such commands not only serve a purpose but also offer options that, for example, are not only used to read information but also to edit it. To see what options are available, type "--help" after the command, such as "ls --help".


The best way to learn Linux commands is to get your hands dirty and start practicing in realistic environments. No amount of theory can replace practice. An example of this would be driving a car. How quickly did you learn to drive?


Sudo gives us safe elevated privileges when we want to run important commands. It might be THE most used and powerful command among Ubuntu users, as it has become the preferred method in that distribution. Now that you have the power, be sure to be safe when you issue your commands! There is no su-undo!


Note: This course is intended for beginners to the shell environment. If you have done shell scripting or other extensive use of the shell before, this course will probably be too introductory for you. You might want to check out our Configuring Linux Web Servers course.


A Linux command is a program or utility that runs on the command line. A\u00a0command line\u00a0is an interface that accepts lines of text and processes them into instructions for your computer.\nAny graphical user interface (GUI) is just an abstraction of command-line programs. For example, when you close a window by clicking on the \u201cX,\u201d there\u2019s a command running behind that action.\nA\u00a0flag\u00a0is a way we can pass options to the command you run. Most Linux commands have a help page that we can call with the flag\u00a0-h. Most of the time, flags are optional.\nAn\u00a0argument\u00a0or parameter is the\u00a0input\u00a0we give to a command so it can run properly. In most cases, the argument is a file path, but it can be anything you type in the terminal.\nYou can invoke flags using hyphens (-) and double hyphens (--), while argument execution depends on the order in which you pass them to the function.\n"},"name":"What Is a Linux Command?","@type":"Question"}]},"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","name":"Linux","@type":["Thing"],"@id":"http:\/\/data.wordlift.io\/wl0150038\/post_tag\/linux","description":"","url":["https:\/\/kinsta.com\/blog\/tag\/linux\/"],"mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/kinsta.com\/blog\/tag\/linux\/","@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","name":"web development","@type":["Thing"],"@id":"http:\/\/data.wordlift.io\/wl0150038\/post_tag\/web-development","description":"","url":["https:\/\/kinsta.com\/blog\/tag\/web-development\/"],"mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/kinsta.com\/blog\/tag\/web-development\/","@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","name":"Tech Tips","@type":["Thing"],"@id":"http:\/\/data.wordlift.io\/wl0150038\/term\/topic\/tech_tips","description":"","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/kinsta.com\/topic\/tech-tips\/"]li code,p code,.wp-block-code,.wp-block-kinsta-notice,.wp-block-kinsta-table-of-contents,.share-staticbackground-color: #f3f3f6;.related-posts background-color: #fafafa;li code,p code border-color: #f3f3f6; Skip to content Test a deployment on our modern App Hosting. For a limited time, your first $20 is on us. 2ff7e9595c


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