If you are a technophile and those black screens and hacking scenes in the movie excite you, learning Linux can be an interesting thing for you. Also if you are a beginner in your software development career, you can make yourself qualified and efficient as per today’s tech trends by learning Linux which will help you to cope with all open-source trends and technology.

So, let's start with the very basic commands you need to know in order to operate a Linux system without using the user interface, that you will use periodically.

1. mkdir

To create a directory(folder) in your machine

~$ mkdir new_folder

2. ls

To list down everything from your present working directory

~$ ls

3. cd

To change a directory or move into a different directory. Running this command without an option will take you to the home folder

~$ cd

4. pwd

To check your present working directory

~$ pwd

5. whoami

To get the user name

~$ whoami

6. uname

It tells you which kernel you are using

~$ uname

7. clear

Clears the screen

~$ clear

8. rm

To remove file

~$ rm my_file.txt

9. rm -rf

To remove a directory

~$ rm -rf new_folder

10. touch

To create a file

~$ touch new_file.txt

To create multiple files with dynamic names like File1.txt, File2.txt, ... File10.txt

~$ touch File{1..10}.txt

11. echo

To print an input text

~$ echo "Hello World"

12. cat

To view the content of the file

~$ cat new_file.txt

13. cp

To copy files or directories from the source to the destination. To copy a directory use -r flag

Below command will copy new_file.txt in one folder back of the present working directory

~$ cp new_file.txt ..
~$ cp -r linux-basics/test ..

14. history

Gives history of all previously executed commands

~$ history

15. man

Provides a user manual of any commands or utilities you can run in the Terminal

~$ man

Conclusion

The above Linux commands will let you perform basic tasks quickly and effectively from the Terminal with more flexibility over your system and the ability to access features that are not always available through a graphical user interface.

15 Basic Linux Commands you should know