Linux/Basic commands

Unix-like operating systems require a working knowledge of several basic commands. Unix®, Linux, BSD and such use a ubiquitous set of these based on the Single UNIX Specification and other standards. Learning to operate a command line interface is a key skill in learning Linux and BSD.

Commands where mistyping could have inconvenient consequences should be drafted in a text editor first and then pasted into terminal, or after a  hash character for temporarily marking the text of the command as a non-executable comment, which is then removed after typing the correct command. Terminal emulators may support marking commands as comment in history through Ctrl+Alt+#.

Unix-like
Like RMS says, "GNU means GNU's Not Unix". Only Unix® is really Unix. Linux and the BSDs are definitely Unix-like though neither one is compliant with the above-mentioned "official" specification. What we present here is based on a set of tools that have been around for a long time. We will be looking at generalizations that behave in similar ways in most *nix environments.

BusyBox
BusyBox is a good example of a more basic collection of utilities and are well suited to the novice. They can be found in Mini Linux distributions, such as Tiny Core Linux.

Exercise 1 Go to TinyCoreLinux.com and check it out.

GNU Core Utilities
The GNU Core Utilities are much more extensive and not for the faint at heart. They are found on most full-sized BSD and Linux systems in their full glory.

Command line arguments
This section lists arbitrary commands that could be useful. Feel free to add any commands you found useful but are not sure where else to add. Some of these commands may require root access (" ").

Devices with example numbers are specified in these examples.

Other useful commands

 * datamash
 * mtail
 * /parallel/
 * /rsync/ advanced copy and synchronization tool including progress indicator
 * /sed/ stream editor for filtering and transforming text
 * stress (command):
 * sudo
 * /tr/
 * /ts/ adds a timestamp to the beginning of each line of input
 * – list files
 * – time since last booting
 * – disk usage of files and directories
 * – total disk usage
 * :  generates an absolute (full) file path
 * – advanced details about a file like multiple date/time stamps, size, inode count, and access rights.
 * – loop device utility
 * – shows information and allows configuring data storage devices, such as read-only mode using.