50 essential Linux commands every software developer should know

Posted on June 9, 2025June 18, 2025 by Aditya Ghosh

File & Directory Management

1. ls – list directory contents
2. cd – change directory
3. pwd – show current directory
4. mkdir – create directory
5. rmdir – remove empty directory
6. rm – remove files/directories
7. cp – copy files/directories
8. mv – move/rename files
9. touch – create an empty file
10. find – search for files
11. locate – fast file search (needs updatedb)
12. tree – view directory structure

File Content & Editing

13. cat – display file content
14. less – scroll through file content
15. head – show first lines of a file
16. tail – show last lines of a file
17. nano – simple text editor
18. vim – powerful text editor
19. grep – search inside files
20. sed – stream editor (text substitution)
21. awk – pattern scanning and processing

Permissions & Ownership

22. chmod – change file permissions
23. chown – change file owner
24. umask – default permission mask
25. stat – file metadata

System Monitoring & Process Control

26. top – live system monitoring
27. htop – advanced system monitor (interactive)
28. ps – list running processes
29. kill – stop a process by PID
30. killall – kill by process name
31. df
-h – disk space usage
32. du
-sh – directory size
33. free
-h – memory usage
34. uptime – system uptime
35. whoami – current user

Networking & Internet

36. ping – check network connectivity
37. curl – fetch URLs (API testing, etc.)
38. wget – download files from web
39. ifconfig / ip
a – network interfaces
40. netstat
-tulpn – ports and listening services
41. ssh – remote login
42. scp – secure file transfer
43. dig – DNS lookup
44. traceroute – trace route to a host

Package Management (Ubuntu/Debian)

45. sudo
apt update – update package lists
46. sudo
apt upgrade – upgrade packages
47. sudo
apt install – install package
48. sudo
apt remove – uninstall package

Development & Scripting

49. which – find path of executable
50. bash
script.sh – run a shell script