Linux Commands

Linux commands are rarely unique: most of them are inherited from Unix and Unix-like operating systems. If you’re familiar with one of the common non-Linux but Unix-like operating systems, you probably know all the basic Linux commands you’ll need.

Linux Commands List

Modern distributions of Linux do have their share of unique commands, and they’re mostly fairly recent. Some of these commands have been so popular than they found their way into other non-Linux distributions:

• apt and apt-get – package managers in Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint
• dpkg – Debian package manager (also available in Ubuntu)
• lsof– list open files (and unix sockets and network connections)
• lspci
• dmidecode– get description of system’s hardware components (and their model names and serial numbers)
• biosdecode
• systemctl
• journalctl
• lsmod
• insmod
• ip – routing, networking and network devices info
• sysctl
• lsb_release – Linux Standard Base (LSB) release information
• cryptsetup – management of LUKS encrypted filesystems

systemd Commands

Recent Linux distros rely on systemd suite of commands for managing Linux OS and its services. This section lists systemd commands:

• systemctl – management of OS services
• journalctl – show latest (error) log messages on server or service level

SELinux Commands

• sestatus
• semanage
• getenforce
• setenforce

See Also

• Basic Unix Commands
• Unix Commands
• macOS commands
• Advanced Unix Commands