This is a list of standard Unix (also Linux) commands that you should be familiar with. Listed in alphabetical order. The word "show" below means display to the stdout. Do not use the commands based only on reading the brief descriptions given here. Read their man pages. A few commands cannot be run unless you are superuser; use sudo, but beware of consequences.
| bash | Bourne-Again Shell |
| bg | place a process in the background |
| cat | show each file in sequence |
| chmod | change the permissions on a file |
| chown | change the owner of a file |
ddd |
the Data Display Debugger front end to gdb |
| df | show mounted volumes, etc |
diff |
show the differences between two files |
| du | show file space usage |
| emacs | the all-powerful text/binary editor; try xemacs also |
| enscript | convert text and source code files to PDF etc. [apt install cups-pdf] |
| env | lists the current environment variables |
| fg | bring a backgrounded process to foreground |
| fsck | check the integrity and repair a file volume |
| file | accurately guess what kind of file |
| find | find files with the given pattern as names, and do things with such files |
| gdb | debug a program; try gdb -tui programFileName |
grep |
print lines matching a pattern |
kdbg |
KDE front end to debugger |
kill |
kills a process |
| ln | creates a link between two files; try ln -s |
| ls | list contents of directory; try ls -lisa |
| lynx | www/news/mail browser |
| make | maintain, update, and regenerate related programs and files |
| man | show reference manual pages; try man -k |
| mkfs | make (construct) a file volume |
| nohup | run a command immune to hangups |
| od | octal dump; try od -x file-name |
ps |
show processes |
| script | Capture the stdin and stdout of commands you run in a session |
| set | set/get and show the values of shell; also learn export variables |
| sloccount | count source code lines in files/ dir |
| source | shell built-in: execute the cmds in a file |
| sudo | as root user run one cmd line |
| time | a prefix to commands, times the command and shows page faults etc. |
| tmux | terminal multiplexer |
| umask | get/set the file mode creation mask |
| w | who is on the system, and what they are doing |
| wget | The non-interactive web/network downloader. |
| xxgdb | GUI interface to gdb source code debugger |