50+ essential and practical commands of Debian | Linux Commands Cheat Sheet

Here, we’ve listed over 50 essential and practical commands for Debian-based Linux terminals. This post is designed to help those who are learning Linux or anyone who may have forgotten a command.

• linux system commands

• shutdown  now

turn off 

 

• reboot

restart 

 

• date

print date 

 

• lshw

hardware information list

 

• systemctl [status, start, restart, stop, enable, disable] service

manage services

 

• uptime

print uptime

 

• useradd [username]

create a new account

 

• passwd [username]

add or change password

 

• userdel [username]

remove a user

 

• su [username]

switch user

 

• sudo [command]

run command as root

 

• who 

print current username

• linux package management by apt

• apt search [package]

find packages by name

 

• apt install [package]

installing a package

 

• apt reinstall [package]

reinstalling a package

 

• apt remove [package]

remove a package

 

• apt update

update package repository (etc/apt/sources.list)

 

• apt upgrade

update packages

 

• apt autoremove

remove useless dependencies

 

• apt list

list of installed package

 

• apt show [package]

show a package info

• linux package management by dpkg

• dpkg -i [package.deb]

install package

 

• dpkg -r [package]

remove package

 

• dpkg -s [package]

search package

 

• dpkg –l

list of installed packages

• linux file and directory commands

• cd [directory] 

change directory

 

• cd ../

moves a directory up

• cp [source] [destination]

copy file

 

• ls [directory]

list files

 

• file [name]

checks a file type

 

• mkdir [dir1]

make directory

 

• pwd

print the current directory path

 

• rm  [dir1]

deletes files from a directory

 

• rmdir [name]

delete empty directories

 

• mv [existing] [new]

move a file or folder

 

• zip [file1.zip] [file2]

compresses one or multiple files

 

• unzip [file1.zip]

extract a compressed file

 

• rar [file]

make rar file

 

• unrar [file.rar]

extract a rar file

 

• nano or mousepad or gedit or vi [file]

text editor

 

• find [name]

search in current directory (* for any ex: name*)

 

• chmod [u=rwx, g=rwx, o=rwx] [file,directory]

change the permissions of files or directory[user,group,other] | [read,write,run]

 

• chown newuser:newgroup [file,directory]

change the ownership of files or directories

 

• linux network commands

• wget or curl [url]

download  page content or file

 

• ip link show

show network interfaces details

 

• ip link set [interface] up

enable network interface

 

• ip link set [interface] down

disable network interface

 

• ip address show

show network interfaces ip address

  

• ip link set [interface] name [newname]

change network interface name

 

• ip address add [ip/subnet] dev [interface]

add new ip address from network interface

 

• ip address del [ip/subnet] dev [interface]

delete ip address from network interface

 

• ip route add default via [ip]

add default gateway

 

• nslookup [domain]

convert domain to ip by dns server

 

• nslookup [ip] 

convert ip to domain by dns server

 

• ssh -p [port] [username]@[ip, domain]

make ssh connection

 

• telnet [ip] [port]

make telnet connection

 

• traceroute [ip, domain]

print routers between you and destination

 

• ping  [ip, domain]

ping command