Linux Tip | 10 Useful Linux Commands

10 very useful commands you can use on your Linux system.
Check out www.ezeelinux.com for more about Linux.

[@RudyBleeker]

As Joe explains, when you use the 'touch' command without any options it will set the time of the file you give as an argument to the current time. But it's good to note that you can use 'touch' to set the time of a file to anything you want with the -d option. This option will even understand a bit of natural language, for example "touch -d yesterday file" will set the time of "file" 24 hours in the past.

[@elaynebarall7908]

really??? if so than its coolllllllll

[@mindright9771]

Good to know. =)

[@absdell5381]

I am a beginner in learning Linux and other computer stuff. At first, I thought "why somebody is taking 34 minutes to tell about just 10 commands of Linux?" But it is really informative. Each minute of video is worth concentrating.

[@nakternal]

Just subscribed. Finally someone who can explain Linux without putting me to sleep or pissing me off with goofy nerd trying to be cool humor or lack of.

[@EzeeLinux]

+nakternal Thanks. That's what I'm trying to do :)

[@asdfkjhlk34]

Agree

[@EzeeLinux]

:)

[@AndrewPayne]

Totally agree

[@TheUtuber999]

nakternal If you're using Linux you're already a nerd - might as well wear the label proudly.

[@TesserId]

Being pedantic again, sorry: strictly speaking, `cd` is a shell command, not a system command, which is why it doesn't have it's own manpage. You can actually find it with `man bash`. But don't do that. Use Bash's `help cd` command, instead. Oh, and also you can `help help`. (Also as a scripter, I went ahead and downloaded the Bash documentation to my local hard drive so that I can study it in a browser.)

[@shellgenius]

Man bash Info bash Whatis bash Help bash Which bash

[@xekis]

You can also search inside of less with "/". "-i" will toggle case sensitivity (though if your pattern has caps it will still assume case sensitivity. "n" for next, "b" for back. Very useful for large text files.

[@rickgaine3476]

I’m glad to see you becoming more for Milyer with the technical aspects of Lenix. Much better than just installing different distributions and playing with different desktops.

[@gimcrack555]

I click on random links about Linux. Just to learn something new, or keep me refresh on commands I already know. That touch timestamp, I really didn't know that one. And will keep that fresh in my mind. That command can come in handy at times. Really like this video. So thumbs up.

[@IrizarryBrandon]

Great "Linux Level 2" video - once we've gotten past cd, mv, ls, rm, and so on, we now have some cool commands that make life easier for us. In particular, I didn't know you could use shutdown -h as a kind of reverse alarm clock. Also, I find blkid useful for detecting USB drives. Thanks!

[@NomadicDmitry]

The "touch" command is probably one of the primary ways why you would need to use a terminal in the first place. Great one!

[@mohittheanand]

for clearing instead of "clear", just use ctrl+L

[@EzeeLinux]

That doesn't work on every terminal and I was trying to keep this video very close to the basics as possible. :)

[@cagedtigersteve]

clear will erase your scrollback so you may want to do ctrl+L instead to preserve your scrollback (same as clear -x)

[@amparorod2000]

The clear command only clears commands from the screen. But if you use history -c, the c option means clear. this will clear everything you typed when you opened the terminal. But if you never use this command before and you think all the commands you have typed are gone by using the clear command then you are wrong. There is this file that keeps all the commands that you have used. This file is called .bash_histor. But that's when you exit the terminal. All the commands will save.

[@Void_Dragon]

I prefer "reset"

[@jamienordmeyer4345]

Nice! I'm running WSL2 on Windows. Naturally, it works in my Linux environment, but it turns out that it works in PowerShell as well. But not cmd.

[@g.5214]

Great video. I just want to add a thing: 'cat' (abbreviation of concatenate) is actually used to concatenate (merge) two or more files. For example: cat file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt file_n.txt We can also redirect the output to, for instance, a file, like this: cat file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt > file_1_2_3.txt file_1_2_3.txt will consist of the contents of file1.txt, file2.txt and file3.txt Again, great video. Keep em coming.

[@ariannamullen5809]

sksmd

[@TheUtuber999]

Goran It *can* be used that way, but its typical use is to print the contents of a single file to standard output (ie. the terminal).

[@marekrudnicki4645]

cat is an abbreviation of catenate not concatenate.

[@alexwells2231]

Also > overwrites the file >> appends to the file

[@carsonfball4]

In addition to these, I find top (which you briefly mentioned), kill, ps, and fg very useful. If you make a sequel video to this, I would suggest those as possible commands.

[@cornlow]

I really like your teaching style and thank you so much for this video. You ROCK!

[@davinonnenmacher7272]

"And you become yourself once again" - Joe Collins, 2016

[@gizzmoguy.]

These are the kind of videos that make me like Linux more and more each thanks for the video keep the good work

[@MyVitros]

Great video sir. I love Linux and have been using it since I was 16! I’m 27 now.

[@mindright9771]

Very good tutorial! I'm a long time Linux user and just wanted to check out your lessons. I will definitely recommend you to some of my students who are looking to learn about Linux commands. Aloha!

[@MindoverMatrix2012]

Thanks! I'm learning your great knowledge and information, much appreciated.

[@momashi69]

Instead of doing: cat file.txt | less you can do: less file.txt Thanks for the which tip, been using linux cli for over ten years and I didn't know this.

[@xrafter]

Some commands needs you to do that

[@uniquechannelnames]

Just a little thing with the whole 'less' & 'more' scrolling thing. You can also set buttons to scroll either a half-page or a full page. ex: my half page is 'Shift + Down', scroll full page down 'Shift + Alt + Down'. So if I want to be scrolling half pages I just push shift then the desired direction. For full-page scrolling, do shift+alt then up or down for faster scrolling works great for me!

[@joedarvish70]

Thank you Joe. Keep up the good work. I hope you will publish more videos.

[@FeelingShred]

My 3 most useful at the moment: 1) sudo sysctl -w vm.drop_caches=3 Reclaims free memory, avoid hang ups 2) chmod +x /path/path/filename Makes a file executable (only local disk) 3) sudo apt clean Clean apt cache

[@williamjames9466]

Humour and genuineness holds my attention making the subject interesting and the video attention grabbing.

[@gregorius62]

There is no man page for cd because cd is part of the shell and is documented in the bash or other shell man page.

[@georgeunknown2833]

Thanks a lot! Didn't know about "sudo -s" and "su user_name")... very useful commands!

[@bennanas5516]

Great commentary, refreshing to hear as it is.

[@sandysamuelofficial]

Your video is very clear and well explained, thank you!

[@SupremeNerd]

you just earned a new sub. thanks for the info. (new Linux Mint user here)

[@asmaao908]

soooo sooooo useful thanks a lot man I have an exam tomorrow . before I listened to this vidio I have zero idea about this freaking commands 😹😸 but now I'm a professional in 34min 😎💪 isn't it looks so great.

[@kevin34ct]

One command I find odd that isn't installed is traceroute (I know there is a package you can install). That along with the ping tool are very much needed to find a fault in a connection to a server. It can tell where the "break" is. It's helped me on Windows systems to find out that a local server was down. (Corporate server in another location). The fix was to force a reroute to a backup server. The reason it wasn't automatic was because the other server was 3000 miles away and didn't have everything that was needed. It was better to see it down so that it could be fixed quickly.

[@bevintx5440]

You don't have to "cat" a file to the "more" command on Linux/UNIX: more [options] [file_name] That was a requirement for the DOS "more" command. It is often useful to pipe the output from another command to less/more.

[@vertigo6982]

Top 2 commands I suggest first to learn. #1 ' man intro ' #2 ' vimtutor '. If you use those to commands, and read everything contained in those commands, then you wont need to ask for help... for a long while.

[@dharmang]

would like to add this command sudo !! this will add sudo to the previous command and execute it, if u forgot to add root permission

[@LloydLynx]

That would have been useful earlier today... very, very useful...

[@elektron2kim666]

With the terminal in live boot I was able to remove a couple of files in my Pop-os install where I accidentally filled up the place with virtual disks of several GB and stopped the system with 0 bytes of free space. The startup worked after that. 7-8 GB of free space was required to show me a login. It's complicated to make oneself root/admin in Linux and give permission to be all over the place, but it worked and was funny to try and solve something like that. I think most terminal commands are well explained on the internet now.

[@TesserId]

My favorite use of touch is to match timestamps with other files: touch -r otherfile.txt And, there are reasons to get pedantic about the three different kinds of time stamps at the more advanced levels: ctime, mtime, and atime.

[@phgeekstuff163]

Thank you Joe! Awesome tips!

[@theblackcatvieweraccount5402]

"Shutdown -t 2" is useful for updating before bed. It'll finish the update and shutdown. For large updates I recommend "Shutdown -t 5" or 10 depending on the size of the update.

[@gutoguto0873]

Can’t you queue a command once the update is done?

[@dallase1]

I've had to use Ctrl Alt F4 a few times with MATE and would either do a Ctrl Alt Del or a shutdown command or reboot command.

[@wildmanjeff42]

thanks for the videos. have learned a lot from your channel. If I could just find my perfect distro now :) like debian neptune and mint (I am still newbie-but learning it. )

[@davidwayne9982]

As much as I hate coding and boring letter stuff-- guess it's time I learned some of the basic commands at least.. and I wanted to learn from you-- YOU make more sense teaching things...and there's no wasted fluff!!!

[@johnmal5975]

Thanks Joe very helpful!

[@CustomNameHere]

I know this is being picky, but sda1, sda2, sdb1, sdb2, etc are PARTITIONS, not drives. sda1 is partition 1 on physical drive sda, and sdb2 is a partition on physdical drive sdb. I think it's important to use the correct terminology, especially for the audience you're trying to reach. I enjoy your videos, though. Keep up the great work !! :-)

[@geodude9537]

good point but he probably considered that common knowledge but we seem to forget there are complete newbies in the crowd

[@firstspar]

Am new to Linux but a power/pro user in Windows. This comment was helpful.

[@frgging]

Some alternatives of some commands in this video for productivity killall -> xkill ls -l -> la (in some distroes) clear -> Ctrl + L ctrl + alt +f7 back to GUI from tty

[@sranstankovic233]

Also for ls -l if you don't have it in your distro you can always edit ~/.bashrc file and add alias like so : alias la="ls -l"

[@JakeSmith-fz9fp]

@@sranstankovic233 it should be alias la="ls -l --almost-all"

[@cyberp0et]

This reminds me of MS-DOS command prompt. I need to pracice more of these on Linux.

[@AlarusOne]

Awesome! I learned some new things today. Thanks. :)

[@motoryzen]

9:40 onwards= a headache saver for me. Thanks Joe

[@15lastone]

Thanks a lot really appreciate it, outstanding tutorial. One question I am using centoOS however I forgot my root password how can I reset it please, Thanks

[@acejinwoo]

Very gud. Presently i am working to take my Linux knowledge to the next level so hopefully this time next year i too will be capable of making videos like this!

[@elaynebarall7908]

Awesome commands as a new linux user... Thanks :)

[@sonaminsan891]

can u plz tell me that for linux which software i should for more practise

[@briianhebert]

Thanks for the great info!

[@andresho3618]

Great for beginners like me. THANKS.

[@hpottstock]

Thanks very much, Joe!

[@xheralt]

One thing I do with timed shutdowns is initiate a long download (say, a new Linux iso from somewhere) before going to sleep, look at the expected completion time, add a little for fudge factor, and tell the machine to 'shutdown -h' plus that amount of time. I also like +0 as faster typing than "now".

[@Thorpe]

I do that also on torrents. So it gets some seed time also on the distro iso and if it didn't finish, my download would just resume when I go back into the application.

[@joetheman74]

As for "which" command, I didn't know that one but I use "whereis" This command will not just tell you where the launch file is but will tell you where all the files related to the program are. It will often give multiple directories for libraries and other related files.

[@visheshpandita2787]

thanks for the knowledge!

[@lifewithglee]

The ctrl alt F4 real terminal has been a saver for me although on a serious hang the TTY has been slow to process the login before I'm able to type "reboot." I only learned recently that ctrl alt F4 followed by ctrl alt del cuts out the authentication and its wait to give a clean shutdown/reboot

[@HebaruSan]

"killall -HUP" (using the hang up signal instead of terminate) can give the program a chance to clean up, depending on how it's written.

[@HebaruSan]

"mkdir -p" is great for ensuring that a path exists in a script, because if any of the parent directories are missing it'll create them for you as well.

[@RGD2k]

CTRL-ALT-T : usually 'open a new terminal', on most linux gui desktops. CTRL-D : how I usually close a terminal (on a blank line. It's the 'end of file' character, which tells bash that it's done, and it can shut itself down) cd : just cd by itself -> it's a shortcut which takes you to your home. No need to type 'cd ~' CTRL-Q ( if you accidentally hit CTRL-S when reaching for CTRL-D, it'll seem like it's frozen... because that's what CTRL-S does.... CTRL-Q tells it to continue) TAB : by far the most useful key, safe to press randomly / multiply. Will try to finish typing filenames or directories, but only as far as it can before there's a choice to make... double-TAB will make it display what choices there are -- type one more letter, then hit tab again. This last one makes the command line nice to use, because you won't have to be touch-typing perfectly all the time. Once you get used to it, the way tab-completion works on windows will annoy -- it's not nearly as nice to you, forcing you to sit there and hit it over and over again while it trys one file after another... So stupid! But that's the biggest difference between Linux and Windows. Annoying things aren't welcome.

[@northof-62]

Open terminal also with WIndows-Key + T

[@kaustubhmurumkar2670]

Thanks Ctrl+Q was most helpful, didn't know that

[@rrook88]

nice vid. a lot new unix players wnet trough some of these things.

[@Dracon600]

Thanks Joe, great video!

[@ArturKorobeynyk]

"Greetings and salutations"... I loved Might and Magic 6 too back in the days.

[@EzeeLinux]

It comes from when I was in school for radio... One of my teachers used to say that on the air. :)

[@chromaticvisionstudio5489]

The Ten Commandments great video

[@pnachtwey]

I learned the which command. I had always used the Find / -executable -name file.ext. Debian is the root operating system that many of the others are derived like ubuntu and mint. I also use apt-get and dpkgs for installing and removing packages.

[@carlpotter5539]

Right-on Joe. Thanks

[@rv-ollie]

Well, if you like the cat command, you might have a need for 'tac' as well. Try it. I've only used it once or twice.

[@freddychampagne4467]

It's late to tell you, but man is only for 'transient' commands. cd is an internal command inside bash (the shell). Help for internal commands of the shell is availlable with -> help so for your 'cd' command you would type -> help cd, and voila: there is the description of the command cd including all options ;) Additional info: cd without any 'arguments' puts you in your home directory, so it's not needed to type cd ~. cd on it's own is enough for going home ;)

[@snsm6730]

I agree, looks more for beginners but that is fine. You gotta start some place and the CL gives you options and is very powerful tool in Linux. Don't be intimidated, learn these and then keep adding new ones...8-)

[@monday6740]

9:50 The WHICH command relies on the PATH variable, it totally ignores other copies of the same executable file on your computer, if not specified in PATH. Actually, nobody says that the paths in your PATH variable actually exist. The main reason to use WHICH is when you have multiple copies of a same-named executable spread out over different structures (path). But, also having those paths in the PATH variable. The order determines which one is used.

[@rickcontreras59]

Helpful and very useful . Thanks Joe:)

[@pseudonym033]

You are totally awesome, thank you Sir

[@motoryzen]

10:15 to 10:26.. if it's native windows program or game..here's one way you can do that. right click on your mint desktop..select " Create a launcher" in the command field type the following info below at the beginning. wine start /unix note the one spacebar press between /unix and the exact path of the .exe file ans ensure one space bar press between wine and start .so an example could be wine start /unix '/home/WhatINamedThisPc/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/amnesia/rest/Launcher.exe' the exact path of that .exe could need either apostrophes or quotations depending on if it lives ín the same drive as Linux Mint...OR if it is a completely separate physical drive. cheers

[@ashrasmun1]

I love that color scheme :)

[@cnicolas]

Hello, may I ask which DE and theme are you using? I really like it :) - Thanks

[@EzeeLinux]

+Charbel Nicolas Linux Mint XFCE.

[@supahfly_uk]

Hey Joe what do you think is best Linux mint or Ubuntu, I used to use mint as main os for a while, I felt like there was a lack of support and help for newbies and people where not very friendly in forums etc so i went back to win 7. I find your videos very helpful I'm itching to try Linux again.

[@EzeeLinux]

Try Ubuntu MATE. That's the easiest Linux to get started with and the support is awesome. :) ubuntu-mate.org/

[@phatamgiang8148]

Hi Joe, I have a simple problem, if it's in Windows, it wouldn't be a problem. I use Linux Mint 18.1 and this is the scenerio: Nautilus told me I have an internal drive name ABC and a USB drive named DEF. I would like to copy file from drive ABC to drive DEF, how would I issue the command in Terminal??? Please help me! I am a Linux neubie. Thanks a lot, Joe.

[@sweetberries4611]

touch command is truly useful, use it very often

[@clav7711]

🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 I ear a book page !!! Oh my thanks a lot to explains that for us :) thanks thanks thanks

[@GifCoDigital]

what do you use touch for that you cant just do by creating a new file and launching Vim all at once? IE: vi newFile

[@metalarms98]

Can you touch -R if you want to touch all files in a repository?

[@mwgary]

What about kill -9 (pid). That usually does does the trick. Failing that, xkill works wonders too.

[@chriscarton4728]

Love the way you talk.

[@LinuxLuddite]

I think you can scroll cat output by 'ctrl+shift+alt+ up/down arrow ' or something

[@themadhack3r431]

165 haters saw this video 😂 Been a power user for many many years while these videos are aimed at new users I always learn or remember something I forgot. 165 haters 165 dislikes. I don't get it, Joe is very clear on his videos even a noob can get it witch is awesome! We need this MS and Apple are too nosey and downright intrusive on our data. More people need to use linux or bsd. Joe is doing community service here. No matter what the video I always leave a like.

[@tubegor]

I also can not understand, how someone can dislike valuable help.

[@oriongalactic]

What program did you use to capture the screen in Linux for the video?

[@EzeeLinux]

SImpleScreenRecorder. :)

[@Svetlio0989]

great video,thanks a lot

[@eracingchannel]

thank you for the helpful video ! I like your clean linux mint setup, I just got my Fedora 29 system optimized and am running it as my daily workhorse

[@bobsmurda119]

Great video man.. very informative :) new sub

[@orlandoc1714]

thanks ,great video!

[@izabelak2562]

This youtube channel is the best

[@lufra0mon]

I might be wrong, but you could actually run 'touch {file1,file2,file3,etc}.txt' and it would create all the files separated by coma with the .txt at the end. Saves a whole bunch of time.

[@EzeeLinux]

Nope. You can do that with spaces as separators but not commas.. :)

[@lufra0mon]

@@EzeeLinux Ohhh right, haven't used that one in a long while, my bad xD

[@easylinux8077]

Thanks for share!!

[@cbrash9]

Great Video Joe!!!!

[@mac6562]

awesome lesson

[@AyoubWissam]

Thank you!

[@vapon]

You can also do a *search* with *less* (among other things), by pressing '/'

[@TheFlyguy31]

Thank you so much

[@alejandrojerez1492]

The touch command is awesome. Go Linux!

[@CustomNameHere]

Just a little thing on the 'more' command. It takes a file as an argument, thereby by-passing the 'cat' prefix. For example: more longfile.txt

[@EzeeLinux]

+Jeremy Nieuwoudt It does now. I don't think it did 20 years ago when I first started using it. LOL I should have pointed that out, I guess. :)

[@EzeeLinux]

+Joe Collins Cool. I see. The Linux Foundation offers training courses. I audited the SysAdmin "Introduction To Linux" course and it was very good. They offer Programming and Engineering courses as well It's a good place to start. www.linux.com

[@rickcontreras59]

Thank you Joe