Can anyone give me a list of commands I can enter in the terminal?

Question

I am trying to understand Ubuntu more and I want to know more commands. Can anyone give me a list of everyday use ones? I would be super happy to learn anything else about Ubuntu too! Thanks!

Close-voters: I don't think asking for a list of everyday commands is too broad. (Asking for one command per answer would be too broad, but that's not what's going on here.) — Eliah Kagan, Sep 05 '13 at 19:40
all people that put on hold as too broad stop screwing with a basic ubuntu user and mess around with some serious ubuntu users. JEEEZZZZZZZZZZ!!! — Thomas, Sep 11 '13 at 00:29
@EliahKagan if anything I would flag it as duplicated of Are there any games which can train people to learn terminal commands? which is adequate for new users. — Braiam, Sep 11 '13 at 01:57
Ok thanks actually for being nice and not being one of the jerks that minuses me because of my good questions. I will check. — Thomas, Sep 11 '13 at 01:58

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

6

Using the following command in terminal:

info 2>/dev/null | grep --color=none "* [a-z]" | sort | less

you will get list of most useful commands. If you find one command interesting from that list, then you can use:

man command

or

info command

to get more information about that command.

See also this answer.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

1

answered Sep 05 '13 at 03:46

Radu Rădeanu

169,590

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 06 '13 at 01:55

Welcome to the Gnu/Linux world!

These are only a few commands that I use often:

nautilus → open a file browser;
gksu nautilus → open a file browser with root or admin privileges (very useful);
free -m → shows how much free ram is left to be used (-m for MB - Mega Bytes);
df -h → shows a lot of info about partitions and available space (-h - human readable);
chown -R nameofuser:nameofuser /foldername or filename → change owner and group for name of user of the file or folders/subfolders indicated (very useful with permissions problems messages);
sudo shutdown now → shutdown system;
sudo shutdown -h +90 → shutdown system in 90 minutess, or number of minutes you choose;
Ctrl + C → these key combination will cancel last or actual running command; Ctrl + L → will clear/clean your command-line;
cp /filename /location → will copy the file to the indicated location;
cp -R /foldername /location → will copy the folder and subfolders to the indicated location;
mv /filename /location → will move a file to a desired location, use -R for folders;
ifconfig → shows you network info;
dhclient → ask for an IP to any DHCP server available in the network;
nano /location/nameoffile → enable you edit files (very useful for modifying config files)

These are just some by now. Practice with them and you will feel more confident with Ubuntu or any Linux distro!

Google a bit and you will get a lot more!

Greetings from Venezuela! Good luck and don't give up to Gnu/Linux!

what command logs off my computer? – Thomas Sep 11 '13 at 00:31 — Thomas, Sep 11 '13 at 00:31
init 0 ---> shutdown and init 6 ---> restart – Naive Dec 10 '13 at 13:35 — Naive, Dec 10 '13 at 13:35

Can anyone give me a list of commands I can enter in the terminal?

2 Answers2