Linux Commands Cheat Sheet

Print current working directory

Change directory

Go up one directory

Go to home directory

Go to previous directory

List directory contents

List all files with details (including hidden)

List files with human-readable sizes

Display directory tree structure

Create an empty file or update timestamp

Copy file or directory

Copy directory recursively

Move or rename a file

Remove a file

Remove a directory and its contents recursively

Create a new directory

Create nested directories

Create a symbolic link

Find files by name pattern

Find files newer than a reference file

Show directory size (human-readable)

Show disk space usage

Show detailed file metadata

Determine file type

Print file contents

View file with paging (q to quit)

Show first N lines of a file

Show last N lines of a file

Follow file output in real time

Search for pattern in file

Recursively search in directory

Case-insensitive search

Replace text in file output

Print first field of each line

Sort lines in a file

Sort and remove duplicate lines

Remove consecutive duplicate lines

Count lines in a file

Compare two files line by line

Cut fields by delimiter

Translate (convert) characters

Set permissions (rwxr-xr-x)

Make file executable

Set permissions recursively

Change file owner and group

Change ownership recursively

Set default permission mask

Run command as superuser

Switch to another user

List all running processes

Find a specific process

Interactive process viewer

Enhanced interactive process viewer

Terminate a process by PID

Force-kill a process

Kill processes by name

Kill all processes with given name

List background jobs

Resume job N in background

Bring job N to foreground

Run command immune to hangups

Run command with lower priority

Check connectivity to a host

Transfer data from/to a URL

Fetch only HTTP headers

Download a file from a URL

Connect to a remote host via SSH

Copy file to remote host via SSH

Sync files locally or remotely

List open ports and listening services

Socket statistics (modern netstat)

Show network interfaces and IP addresses

Show routing table

DNS lookup for a domain

Query DNS name server

Trace packet route to host

Scan all ports on a host

Create gzip-compressed tar archive

Extract gzip tar archive

Create bzip2 tar archive

Extract bzip2 tar archive

List contents of tar archive

Create a zip archive

Extract a zip archive

Compress a file with gzip

Decompress a gzip file

Show system information

Show or set system hostname

Show system uptime and load average

Show memory usage (human-readable)

Show CPU information

List block devices (disks)

Show recent kernel messages

View systemd journal logs

Check status of a service

Start a systemd service

Stop a systemd service

Enable service to start on boot

Edit current user crontab

Print all environment variables

Set an environment variable

Print value of a variable

Show command history

Create a command alias

Show path of a command

Show manual page for a command