Linux Commands Cheat Sheet by Category

In this tutorial, we’ll show you a mated list of the most useful Linux commands cheatsheet. This are some of the more useful commands, but they aren’t easy for everyone to remember.

Did you know that there are verbally hundreds of Linux commands? Even on a simple installation of a Linux server, there are easily over 1,000 different commands. The interesting thing is that most people only need to use a very small subset of this commands. Below is a Linux “cheat sheet” that breaks down some of the more commonly used commands by category.

This cheat sheet offers a number of commands that you can use for quick reference. I have prepared this Linux commands cheat sheet as a quick reference for advanced and basic users.

Also Read: How To Install Notepad++ In Ubuntu ( Linux )

Basic Linux Commands CheatSheet

In this section, we will show you some basic Linux commands with examples.

Command	Description
date	Display the current system date and time
hostnamectl	Get system information including, operating system, kernel, and release version
hostname	Display the hostname of the system
free -m	Screen free and used memory in the system
top	Display all running processes
ls	List all files and directories in the current working directory
ifconfig	Display the IP and Mac Address of the system
w	Display currently logged in users in the system
ls -al	List all files and directories including, hidden files and other information like permissions, size, and owner
cd	Change the directory to the home directory
cd ..	Change the directory to one level up
reboot	Restart the system
cat filename	Display the content of the file
mv oldfile newfile	Rename a file
rm filename	Delete a file
mkdir dirname	Create a directory
rm -rf dirname	Remove a directory
history	Print a history list of all commands
cat file1 file2 > file3	Combine two files named file1 and file2 and store the output in a new file file3
tail filename	Display the last 10 lines of a file
head filename	Display the first 10 lines of a file
clear	Clear the terminal
shutdown -h now	Shut down the system

File Permission Commands

Command	Description
chmod 777 filename	Assign full(read, write, and execute) permission to everyone
ls -l filename	Check the current permission of any file
chmod -R 777 dirname	Assign full permission to the directory and all sub-directories
chmod 766 filename	Assign full permission to the owner, and read and write permission to group and others
chown -R user:group dirname	Change the owner and group ownership of the directory and all sub-directories
chmod -x filename	Remove the execution permission of any file
chown username filename	Change the ownership of a file
chown user:group filename	Change the owner and group ownership of a file

Networking Commands

Command	Description
ip addr add IP-Address dev eth1	Add a temporary IP address to interface eth1
ip addr show Or ifconfig	List all IP addresses and network interfaces
netstat -pnltu	Display all listening port
whois domainname	Display more information about any domain
host domainname	Perform an IP lookup for a domain
ping host-ip	Check connectivity between two hosts
dig -x IP-Address	Perform a reverse lookup of an IP address
dig domainname	Display DNS information of any domain
dig -x domainame	Perform a reverse lookup on domain

User and Group Management Commands

Linux is a multi-user operating system. Therefore, multiple users can log into the system and work on the system at the same time. In some cases, two or more users may need to share access to system resources such as files and directories. In this case, managing users and groups allows you to achieve your goals.

Command	Description
w	Display all login users
useradd username	Add a new user account
userdel -r username	Delete a user account
id	Display UID and GID of the current user
usermod [option] username	Change the user account information including, group, home directory, shell, expiration date
usermod -aG groupname username	Add a user to a specific group
groupadd groupname	Create a new group
groupdel groupname	Remove a group
last	Display information of the last login user

Process Management Commands

When to run an application on Linux. The application will receive a process ID or PID. Process Management helps you monitor and manage your application.

Command	Description
ps -ef | grep processname	Display information of specific process
ps	Display all active processes
top	Manage and display all processes in realtime
pstree	Display processes in the tree-like diagram
lsof	List all files opened by running processes
kill pid	Kill a specific process using process ID
pidof processname	Get the PID of any process
killall processname	Kill all processes by name
bg	Display stopped or background jobs

Disk Management Commands

In this section, we will show you disk management commands, including add and delete partitions, mount partition, check disk space, format partition, etc.

Command	Description
fdisk /dev/sda	Create a new partition on /dev/sda device
fdisk -l	List all disk partitions
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1	Format the partition named /dev/sda1
fsck.ext4 /dev/sda1	Check and repair a file system for any error
du -hs	Display the size of your current directory
badblocks -s /dev/sda	Test for unreadable blocks on disk /dev/sda
lsblk	Display information about block devices
lsusb -tv	Display all USB devices
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt	Mount any partition to any directory
df -h	Display free space of mounted file system
df -i	Display free inodes on the file system
hdparm -tT /dev/sda	Perform a read speed test on disk /dev/sda

Compress and Uncompress Commands

Tar, Zip, and Unzip are the most popular Linux command line utilities used to zip and unzip files and directories.

Command	Description
tar -cvf filename.tar filename	Compress a file in the Tar archive
tar -xvf filename.tar	Uncompressed a Tar file
tar -tvf filename.tar	List the content of the Tar file
zip filename.zip file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt	Compress multiple files to a zip
zip -u filename.zip file4.txt	Add a file to a zip file
zip -d filename.zip file4.txt	Delete a file from a zip file
unzip -l filename.zip	Display the content of zip archive file
tar -xvf filename.tar file1.txt	Untar a single file from Tar file
unzip filename.zip -d /dirname	Unzip a file to a specific directory
tar -rvf filename.tar file2.txt	Add a file to the Tar file
zip filename.zip filename	Compress a single file to a zip
unzip filename.zip	Unzip a file

Package Management Command

In this section we will show a list of all commands to install, remove and manage packages in Linux.

Command	Description
apt-get remove packagename	Remove a package on Debian based distributions
apt-get install packagename	Install the package on Debian based distributions
dpkg -l | grep -i installed	Get a list of all packages on Debian based distributions
dpkg -i packagename.deb	Install .deb package
apt-get update	Update the repository on Debian based distributions
apt-get upgrade packagename	Upgrade a specific package on Delian based distributions
yum update	Update all system packages to the latest version on RPM-based distributions
yum list --installed	List all installed packages on RPM-based distributions
yum list --available	List all available packages on RPM-based distributions
apt-get autoremove	Remove all unwanted packages on Delian based distributions
yum install packagename	Install the package on RPM-based distributions
yum remove packagename	Remove a package on RPM-based distributions

PDF Linux Commands CheatSheet

If you’d rather have all the commands on a single page reference sheet, we’ve created a useful Linux command line cheat sheet. You can save the Linux command list in PDF format by clicking the Download Linux Cheat Sheet button below.

Linux Commands CheatSheet Download

Final Thoughts

Feel free to refer to this cheat sheet whenever you need a quick update. The goal here is to save you as much time as possible when trying to remember a certain command. The examples above are the most commonly used Linux commands. Hope this helps you in your daily system administration tasks.