Linux Fundamentals

Important commands that might be handy

My Linux journey started off with using Ubuntu and exploring how to use it , since then I have changed quite a few distributions and currently stuck with Arch (Did I install it … Nah, my friend Vishal quite a superuser helped me install it).

This is a certaintly not a guide for installing Arch and setting it up, rather an open ended note which might be updated periodically as i get to learn and explore more on using Linux.

The basics

Shell

A program that receives commands from the keyboard and send them to the OS for the respective action to be performed.

While navigating the file using the shell , use pwd to know the path currently present. To change the directory use cd command.

Commands which is more than enough for using Linux

cat - displays the contents of the file, dont use it for files that has a lot of content

cat slimshady.py

cp - creates a copy of file from one location to another

cp random_file /home/docs/randomstuff

mv - Used for moving as well as renaming files

mv hi hello - This renames the file hi to hello

mv file1 /home/docs/randomstuff - This moves file1 to a folder called randomstuff

mkdir - Used for creating directories to store the files

mkdir Learn

rm - Used to remove files(Super handy). Do note than once removed there is no trash from which you can recover, its gone for ever.

rm file1- Removes a file named file1

rmdir Learn - Removes the directory Learn

All these basic commands are more than enough to get started, in fact at this stage i feel you really do not need anything more fancy than this.