Patrick Domingues

Linux is a popular open-source operating system used by many developers, system administrators, and hobbyists. One of the most powerful features of Linux is the command line interface, which allows users to interact with the system using commands rather than graphical interfaces. In this tutorial, we’ll cover some of the basic Linux commands that you can use to navigate the file system, create and remove files and directories, copy and move files, and change file permissions.

Listing files and directories:

The ls command is used to list the files and directories in the current working directory. When you open a terminal, you’ll be placed in your home directory, which is usually /home/username. To see the files and directories in your home directory, simply type ls and hit Enter. You’ll see a list of files and directories.

Changing the working directory:

To change the current working directory, use the cd command. For example, if you want to change to the Documents directory, you can type cd Documents. To go back to the previous directory, type cd ... You can also use absolute paths to change to a specific directory, for example, cd /home/username/Documents.

Creating directories:

To create a new directory, use the mkdir command. For example, if you want to create a directory named new_directory, you can type mkdir new_directory. The new directory will be created in the current working directory.

Removing files and directories:

To remove files, use the rm command. For example, if you want to remove a file named file.txt, you can type rm file.txt. To remove a directory and its contents, use the -r option, for example, rm -r directory/. Be careful when using the rm command, as it permanently deletes files and directories.

Copying and moving files:

To copy files and directories, use the cp command. For example, if you want to copy a file named file.txt to the Documents directory, you can type cp file.txt /home/username/Documents/. To copy a directory and its contents, use the -r option, for example, cp -r directory/ /home/username/Documents/. To move files and directories, use the mv command. For example, if you want to move a file named file.txt to the Documents directory and rename it to new_file.txt, you can type mv file.txt /home/username/Documents/new_file.txt.

Viewing file contents:

To view the contents of a file, use the cat command. For example, if you want to view the contents of a file named file.txt, you can type cat file.txt. This will display the contents of the file in the terminal.

Searching for patterns in files:

To search for a pattern in a file, use the grep command. For example, if you want to search for the word “pattern” in a file named file.txt, you can type grep "pattern" file.txt. This will display any lines in the file that contain the word “pattern”.

Changing file permissions:

To change the permissions of a file or directory, use the chmod command. For example, if you want to give read, write, and execute permission to the owner and read and execute permission to others for a file named file.txt, you can type chmod 755 file.txt. This will change the file permissions to -rwxr-xr-x.

Super User Do:

This command sudo allows a user with administrative privileges to execute a command as a superuser. For example you may use sudo apt-get update to update your Linux packages.

Conclusion:

These are just a few of the basic Linux commands that you can use to navigate the file system, create and remove files and directories, copy and move files, view file contents, search for patterns in files.

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