Linux Commands Cheat Sheet

Linux Commands Reference

This comprehensive Linux commands cheat sheet covers over 200 essential commands every Linux user, developer, and system administrator should know. Whether you're a beginner learning the terminal or an experienced sysadmin needing a quick reference, this guide organizes commands into logical categories for easy browsing and searching.

Categories Covered

• File & Directory — ls, cd, cp, mv, rm, find, mkdir, and more for navigating and managing files
• Text & Content — cat, grep, sed, awk, head, tail, cut, sort, uniq for processing text
• Permissions & Ownership — chmod, chown, chgrp, sudo, su for access control
• Process Management — ps, top, kill, htop, screen, tmux for managing running processes
• Networking — ping, curl, wget, ssh, scp, rsync, netstat, nmap for network operations
• Package Management — apt, yum, dnf, pacman, pip, npm for installing software
• Compression & Archive — tar, gzip, zip, unzip, bzip2, xz for compressing files
• System Information — uname, free, lscpu, lsblk, dmesg, journalctl for system info
• Disk & Storage — fdisk, mount, mkfs, dd, fsck for disk management
• User & Group — useradd, usermod, passwd, groupadd for user management
• Shell & Scripting — echo, export, alias, cron, read for shell scripting
• Firewall & Security — iptables, ufw, openssl, gpg, ssh-keygen for security
• Performance & Monitoring — vmstat, sar, iotop, strace, perf for performance tuning

How to Use This Cheat Sheet

Use the search box at the top to instantly filter commands by name or keyword. Click a category tag to browse all commands in that category. Each command card shows the command name, a description, and practical examples with common flags and options.

Linux Command Tips for Beginners

• Use man pages — Run man command to read the full manual for any command.
• Tab completion — Press Tab to auto-complete commands, filenames, and paths.
• Up arrow — Cycle through your command history with the Up arrow key.
• Pipe commands — Use | to chain commands, e.g., ls -la | grep '.txt'.
• Redirect output — Use > to save output to a file, e.g., ls > files.txt.
• Background tasks — Add & to run a command in the background, e.g., command &.

FAQ

What's the difference between sudo and su? — sudo runs a single command as root, while su switches to the root user's shell entirely.

How do I find a file in Linux? — Use find /path -name 'filename' or locate filename for faster searches.

How do I check disk space? — Use df -h for filesystem usage or du -sh /path for directory size.

How do I kill a process? — Find the PID with ps aux | grep name or pgrep name, then kill PID or killall name.