Linux Basic Notes for VLSI

What is Linux Operating System

Linux is based on the UNIX operating system. UNIX is a powerful, multi-user, multitasking
operating system originally developed in the 1970s at AT&T Bell Labs. It laid the foundation for many
modern operating systems, including Linux.

• Linux is free and open-source, accessible to everyone.

• Its source code can be inspected and modified by anyone.
• This promotes global collaboration and innovation.
• Linux offers efficient performance and strong security.
• It works well across many devices and industries.

The Linux Operating System is a Unix-like operating system that combines a wide range of open-
source tools and components to form a complete computing environment. These components include file
systems, user interfaces, system utilities, and application programs all working together to manage hardware
and enable users to interact with their computer systems.

To create a full and functional system, the Linux is combined with a collection of software packages
and utilities, which are together called Linux distributions.

What is a “distribution?”
Linux distribution is an operating system that is made up of a collection of software based on Linux
kernel or you can say distribution contains the Linux kernel and supporting libraries and software. And you
can get Linux-based operating system by downloading one of the Linux distributions and these distributions
are available for different types of devices like embedded devices, personal computers, etc.

Why use Linux?

Because it is free, open-source, and extremely flexible, Linux is widely utilized. For servers and
developers, it is the ideal option because it offers strong security, stability, and performance. Generally
interoperable hardware, a broad software library, and a vibrant community that offers support and regular
updates are the many benefits of Linux. Due to its adaptability, users can customize the operating system
according to their own needs, whether they become for personal or large enterprise use.

How is the Linux Operating System Used

The Linux operating system is widely used across various domains due to its flexibility, security, and open-
source nature
 • Servers and Hosting: Powers web servers, cloud infrastructure, and database management
systems.
• Development: Used by developers for coding, debugging, and running applications.
• Desktop and Personal Use: Provides secure and customizable desktop environments.
• Cybersecurity: Essential for ethical hacking, penetration testing, and security research.
• Embedded Systems: Runs lightweight devices like routers, IoT gadgets, and smart appliances.
• Supercomputers: Dominates high-performance computing for scientific research and simulations.
• Education: A cost-effective tool for teaching programming and system administration.

Which distribution is right for you?

Choosing the right Linux distribution depends on your needs and experience level:
• For Beginners: Ubuntu is ideal for new users due to its user-friendly interface and strong community
support. Linux Mint is another beginner-friendly option, offering a Windows-like experience.

• For Advanced Users: Arch Linux is favored for its minimalism and deep customization. Gentoo is
another powerful option for users who want full control but are ready for a steep learning curve.

• For Developers: Fedora is popular for its cutting-edge tools and suitability for testing and
development. Debian stands out for its stability and vast package repository, making it great for both
development and production.

• For Servers: For server environments, CentOS is a powerful, community-maintained distribution

that matches Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) quite somewhat. As an alternative, Ubuntu Server
offers an extensive list of server applications in addition to strong community support and ease of
use.

• For Lightweight Systems: Lubuntu is frequently picked by users either like lightweight operating
systems or have outdated equipment due to its ability to utilize system resources efficiently while
maintaining functionality. Another slim option is Puppy Linux, that is made to run well on outdated
hardware while maintaining the essential functions and applications.

Installing Linux
Selecting a Ubuntu, Fedora, or Linux Mint distribution which suits your needs is the initial step in the
straightforward procedure for installing Linux.
 Installing Linux on bootable USB drive
• Download the ISO file first from the distribution's official website.
• Next, utilize an application like Etcher for macOS and Linux or Rufus for Windows to create a
bootable USB drive.
• Following you insert the USB drive into your computer and restart it.
• After that you may set the USB drive as the primary boot device by traversing to the BIOS or UEFI
settings.
• Upon booting from the USB the hard drive, the Linux setup will show up.
• To partition the drive, choose your time zone, create user accounts, and change system settings.
• When the installation concludes, disconnect the USB drive and turn on your computer normally.
• For more detailed way to install the Linux Mint .
Advantages of Linux
• The main advantage of Linux is it is an open-source operating system you can contribute, modify,
and distribute the code freely.
• In terms of security, Linux is more secure than any other operating system and does not require any
anti-virus software.
• The software updates in Linux are easy and frequent.
• Linux is freely available to use on the internet.
 • It provides high stability it rarely slows down or freezes and there is no need to reboot it after a
short time.
Disadvantages of Linux
• It is not very user-friendly. So, it may be confusing for beginners.
• It has small peripheral hardware drivers as compared to windows.
Linux Commands
Basic tools for utilizing the command line interface (CLI) to communicate with the operating system are
Linux commands. Commonly used commands like:

• ls – Lists contents of directories

• cd – Changes the current directory

• pwd – Displays the current directory path

• cp, mv, rm – Used to copy, move, and delete files respectively

• free – Shows memory usage

• df – Checks disk space usage

• top – Monitors running processes

• netstat, ifconfig, ping – Help monitor and troubleshoot network connections

Package management differs depending on the distribution; Fedora-based machines use dnf, while Debian-
based systems use apt. Commands like cat, grep, awk, and sed are required for editing text files. Knowing
and performing these directions well enables. For clear understanding about the Linux commands refer
this link.

Linux History
In 1991, Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel, inspired by UNIX operating system and the
MINIX operating system, to make a flexible and affordable system for personal computers. Developers
around the world quickly joined in to improve it, leading to the creation of full Linux systems known as
distributions.

Over the years, Linux has become known as a key component of modern computing, powering
everything from servers and personal computers to supercomputers and smartphones. Due to its flexibility,
durability, and strong community support, developers, businesses, and educational institutions frequently opt
for it.
 Linux commands are essential for controlling and managing the system through the terminal. This
terminal is similar to the command prompt in Windows. It’s important to note that Linux/Unix commands
are case-sensitive. These commands are used for tasks like file handling, process management, user
administration, networking, and system monitoring. Here’s a list of A to Z Linux commands, covering all
operations that can be performed on the Linux terminal, including complete Linux commands for file
management, process control, networking, user administration, and system monitoring:

Commands Description

access Used to check whether the calling program has access to a specified file. It can
be used to check whether a file exists or not

accton Used to turn on or turn off the process for accounting or change info process
accounting file

aclocal Used to automatically generate aclocal.m4 files from configure.in file

acpi Used to display the battery status and other ACPI information

acpi_available Tests whether ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) subsystem
is available or not

acpid It provides intelligent power management on a system and is used to notify the
user-space programs about the ACPI events

addr2line Used to convert addresses into file names and line numbers

agetty It is a Linux version of getty, which is a Unix program running on a host

computer that manages physical or virtual terminals to allow multi-user access

alias Instructs the shell to replace one string with another string while executing the
commands

amixer It is a command-line mixer for ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)

sound-card driver

aplay It is a command-line audio player for ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound

Architecture) sound card drivers.

aplaymidi Used to play standard MIDI(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files, by

sending the content of a MIDI file to an ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound
Architecture) MIDI port
apropos It helps the user when they don’t remember the exact command but knows
a few keywords related to the command that define its uses or functionality

apt Provides a high-level CLI (Command Line Interface) for the package
management system and is intended as an interface for the end user which enables
some options better suited for interactive usage by default compared to more
specialized APT tools like apt-cache and apt-get

apt-get It is a command-line tool which helps in handling packages in Linux

aptitude Opens up a highly built-in interface to interact with the package manager
of the machine

ar Used to create, modify and extract the files from the archives

arch Used to print the computer architecture

arp It manipulates the System’s ARP cache. It also allows a complete dump of
the ARP cache

aspell Used as a spell checker in Linux

atd It is a job scheduler daemon that runs jobs scheduled for later execution

atrm Used to remove the specified jobs. To remove a job, its job number is passed
in the command

atq It displays the list of pending jobs which are scheduled by the user

autoconf Used in Linux to generate configuration scripts

autoheader Used to create a template file of C “#define” or any other template header
for configure to use

automake Used for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant with the set
GNU Coding Standards

autoreconf Used to create automatically buildable source code for Unix-like systems

autoupdate Used to update configure.in file in our Linux system to a newer Autoconf.

awk It is a scripting language used for manipulating data and generating reports

banner Used to print the ASCII character string in large letter to standard output
basename It strips directory information and suffixes from file names i.e. it prints the
file name NAME with any leading directory components removed

batch Used to read commands from standard input or a specified file and execute
them when system load levels permit i.e. when the load average drops below 1.5

bc Used for command line calculator

bg Used to place foreground jobs in background

biff A mail notification system for unix that notifies the user at the command
line when new mail arrives and tells from whom it is

bind Used to set Readline key bindings and variables

bison It is basically a parser generator similar to yacc

break Used to terminate the execution of for loop, while loop and until loop

builtin Used to run a shell builtin, passing it arguments(args), and also to get the
exit status

bzcmp Used to invoke the cmp utility on bzip2 compressed files

bzdiff Used to compare the bzip2 compressed files

bzgrep Used to search for a pattern or an expression but inside a bzip2-compressed

file

bzip2 Used to compress and decompress the files

bzless It does not have to read the entire input file before starting, so with a large
file, it starts up faster

bzmore Used as a filter for CRT viewing of bzip2 compressed files, which are saved
with .bz2 suffix

cal Used to see the calendar of a specific month or a whole year. By default,
it shows current month's calendar as output

case It is the best alternative when we had to use multiple if/elif on a single
variable

cat Reads data from file and gives their content as output. It helps us to
create, view, concatenate files
cc It is used to compile the C language codes and create executables

ccrypt It is a command line tool for encryption and decryption of data

cd Known as change directory command. It is used to change current

working directory

cfdisk It displays or manipulates the disk partition table by providing a text-

based “graphical” interface

chage Used to view and change the user password expiry information

chattr It is a file system command which is used for changing the attributes of
a file in a directory

chfn It allows you to change a user’s name and other details easily. chfn
stands for Change finger

chgrp Used to change the group ownership of a file or directory

chkconfig Used to list all available services and view or update their run level
settings

chmod Used to change the access mode of a file

chown Used to change the file Owner or group

chpasswd Used to change password for multiple users at a time

chroot Used to change the root directory

chrt Used for manipulating the real-time attributes of a process

chsh Used to change the user’s login shell(currently login shell)

chvt Used to switch between the different TTY (TeleTYpewriter) terminals

available

cksum Used to display a CRC(Cyclic Redundancy Check) value, the byte size
of the file and the name of the file to standard output

clear Used to clear the terminal screen

cmp Used to compare the two files byte by byte and helps you to find out
whether the two files are identical or not
col It is used to filter out reverse line feeds. The col utility simply reads from
the standard input and writes to standard output

colcrt Used to format the text processor output so that it can be viewed on
Cathode Ray Tube displays

colrm Removes selected columns from a file

column Used to display the contents of a file in columns

comm Compares two sorted files line by line and write to standard output; the
lines that are common and the lines that are unique

compress Used to reduce the file size. After compression, the file will be available
with an added .Z extension

continue Used to skip the current iteration in for, while and until loop

cp Used to copy files or group of files or directory

cpio cpio stands for “copy in, copy out“. It is used for processing the archive
files like *.cpio or *.tar. This command can copy files to and from archives

cpp It is automatically used by C compiler to transform your program before

compilation

cron A software utility, offered by Linux-like operating system which

automates the scheduled task at a predetermined time

crontab A list of commands that you want to run on a regular schedule, and also
the name of the command used to manage that list

csplit Used to split any file into many parts as required by the user

ctags It allows quick access across the files (For example quickly seeing
definition of a function)

cupsd It is a type of scheduler for CUPS (Common Unit Printing System). It

implements the printing system on the basis of the Internet Printing Protocol

curl A tool to transfer data to or from a server, using any of the supported
protocols

cut For cutting out the sections from each line of files and writing the result
to standard output
cvs Used to store the history of a file. Whenever a file gets corrupted or
anything goes wrong “cvs” help us to go back to the previous version and restore
our file

date Used to display the system date and time. It is also used to set date and
time of the system

dc Used to evaluate arithmetic expressions. It evaluates expressions in the

form of a postfix expression

dd It is a command-line utility for Unix and Unix-like operating systems

whose primary purpose is to convert and copy files

declare Used to declare shell variables and functions, set their attributes and
display their values

depmod Used to generate a list of dependency description of kernel modules and

its associated map files

df Used to display information related to file systems about total space and
available space

diff Used to display the differences in the files by comparing the files line by
line

diff3 Used to compare the three files line by line

dir Used to list the contents of a directory

dirname Used to remove the trailing forward slahes “/” from the NAME and prints
the remaining portion

dirs Used to display the list of currently remembered directories

disable Used to stop the printers or classes

dmesg Used to examine the kernel ring buffer and print the message buffer of
kernel

dmidecode Used when the user wants to retrieve system’s hardware related
information such as Processor, RAM(DIMMs), BIOS detail, etc. of Linux system
in a readable format
domainname Used to return the Network Information System (NIS) domain name of
the host

dos2unix Converts a DOS text file to UNIX format

dosfsck Diagnoses MS-DOS file system for problems and attempts to repair them

dstat Used to retrieve information or statistics form components of the system

such as network connections, IO devices, or CPU, etc.

du Used to track the files and directories which are consuming excessive
amount of space on hard disk drive

dump Used to backup the filesystem to some storage device

dumpe2fs Used to print the super block and blocks group information for the
filesystem present on device

dumpkeys Used for the dump keyboard translation tables

echo Used to display line of text/string that are passed as an argument

ed Used for launching the ed text editor which is a line-based text editor with
a minimal interface which makes it less complex for working on text files i.e
creating, editing, displaying and manipulating files

egrep It treats the pattern as an extended regular expression and prints out the
lines that match the pattern

eject It allows ejecting a removable media (typically a CD-ROM, floppy disk,

tape, or JAZ or ZIP disk) using the software

emacs It is a editor having simple user interface. Also, there is no insert mode in
this editor. It only have editing mode.

enable Used to start the printers or classes

env Used to either print environment variables. It is also used to run a utility
or command in a custom environment

eval Built-in command used to execute arguments as a shell command

ex It is a text editor in Linux which is also termed as the line editor mode of
the vi editor
exec Used to execute a command from the bash itself

exit Used to exit the shell where it is currently running

expand Allows you to convert tabs into spaces in a file and when no file is
specified it reads from standard input

expect This command or scripting language works with scripts that expect user
inputs. It automates the task by providing inputs

export It is bash shell BUILTINS commands, which means it is part of the shell.
It marks an environment variables to be exported to child-processes

expr It evaluates a given expression and displays its corresponding output

factor Used to print the prime factors of the given numbers, either given from
command line or read from standard input

fc Used to list, edit or re-execute the commands previously entered into an

interactive shell

fc-cache It scans the font directories and build font cache for applications which
use fontconfig for their font handling

fc-list It is used to list the available fonts and font styles. Using the format
option, the list of all fonts can be filtered and sorted out

fdisk Format disk is a dialog-driven command in Linux used for creating and
manipulating disk partition table

fg Used to put a background job in foreground

fgrep Used to search for the fixed-character strings in a file

file Used to determine the type of a file. .file type may be of human-
readable(e.g. ‘ASCII text’) or MIME type(e.g. ‘text/plain; charset=us-ascii’)

find Used to find files and directories and perform subsequent operations on
them

finger It is a user information lookup command which gives details of all the
users logged in.

fmt Works as a formatter for simplifying and optimizing text files

fold It wraps each line in an input file to fit a specified width and prints it to
the standard output

for Used to repeatedly execute a set of command for every element present
in the list

free Displays the total amount of free space available along with the amount
of memory used and swap memory in the system, and also the buffers used by the
kernel

Fun Used to draw various type of patterns on the terminal

function Used to create functions or methods

g++ Used for preprocessing, compilation, assembly and linking of source code
to generate an executable file

gawk Used for pattern scanning and processing language

gcc GNU Compiler Collections is used to compile mainly C and C++

language. It can also be used to compile Objective C and Objective C++

gdb GNU Debugger tool helps to debug the programs written in C, C++, Ada,
Fortran, etc.

getent Used to get the entries in a number of important text files called databases

gpasswd Used to administer the /etc/group and /etc/gshadow

grep Searches a file for a particular pattern of characters, and displays all lines
that contain that pattern

groupadd Used to create a new user group

groupdel Used to delete a existing group

groupmod Used to modify or change the existing group on Linux system

groups Groups are the collection of users. Groups make it easy to manage users
with the same security and access privileges

grpck It verifies the integrity of the groups information. It checks that all entries
in /etc/group and /etc/gshadow have the proper format and contain valid data
grpconv It is used to convert to shadow groups. The grpconv command creates a
gshadow from the group and an optionally existing gshadow

gs This command invokes Ghostscript, which is an interpreter of Adobe

Systems PostScript and Portable Document Format(PDF) languages

gunzip Used to compress or expand a file or a list of files in Linux

gzexe Used to compress executable files and also used to automatically

uncompress and execute the files

gzip This command compresses files. Each single file is compressed into a
single file.

halt Used to instruct the hardware to stop all the CPU functions. Basically, it
reboots or stops the system.

hash Used to maintain a hash table of recently executed programs

hdparm Used to get statistics about the hard disk, alter writing intervals, acoustic
management, and DMA settings

Head Prints the top N number of data of the given input

help Displays information about shell built-in commands

hexdump Used to filter and display the specified files, or standard input in a human
readable specified format

history Used to view the previously executed command

host Used for DNS (Domain Name System) lookup operations

hostid Used to displays the Host’s ID in hexadecimal format

hostname Used to obtain the DNS(Domain Name System) name and set the system’s
hostname or NIS(Network Information System) domain name.

hostnamectl Provides a proper API used to control Linux system hostname and change
its related settings

htop It is a command line utility that allows the user to interactively monitor the
system’s vital resources or server’s processes in real time
hwclock Utility for accessing the hardware clock, also called Real Time Clock
(RTC)

iconv Used to convert some text in one encoding into another encoding

id Used to find out user and group names and numeric ID’s (UID or group
ID) of the current user or any other user in the server

if Used to execute commands based on conditions

ifconfig Used to configure the kernel-resident network interfaces.

iftop It is a network analyzing tool used by system administrators to view the

bandwidth related stats

ifup It basically brings the network interface up, allowing it to transmit and
receive data

import Used for capturing a screenshot for any of the active pages we have and
it gives the output as an image file

info Reads documentation in the info format. It will give detailed information
for a command when compared with the main page

insmod Used to insert modules into the kernel

install Used to copy files and set attributes

iostat Used for monitoring system input/output statistics for devices and
partitions

iotop Used to display and monitor the disk IO usage details and even gets a
table of existing IO utilization by the process

ip Used for performing several network administration tasks

ipcrm Used to remove some IPC(Inter-Process Communication) resources. It

eliminates the IPC objects and their associated data structure form the system

ipcs Shows information on the inter-process communication facilities for

which the calling process has read access

iptables Used to set up and maintain tables for the Netfilter firewall for IPv4,
included in the Linux kernel
 iptables- It will save the current iptables rules in a user specified file, that can be
save used later when the user wants

iwconfig Used to display the parameters, and the wireless statistics which are
extracted from /proc/net/wireless

join It is a command line utility for joining lines of two files based on a key
field present in both the files

journalctl Used to view systemd, kernel and journal logs

kill Used to terminate processes manually. kill command sends a signal to a process
which terminates the process

last Used to display the list of all the users logged in and out since the file
/var/log/wtmp was created

less Used to read contents of text file one page(one screen) per time

let Used to evaluate arithmetic expressions on shell variables

ln Used to create links between files

locate Used to find the files by name

look Shows the lines beginning with a given string

lsblk Used to display details about block devices and these block devices(Except ram
disk) are basically those files that represent devices connected to the pc.

lshw Used to generate the detailed information of the system’s hardware

configuration from various files in the /proc directory

lsmod Used to display the status of modules in the Linux kernel. It results in a list of
loaded modules

lsof Provides a list of files that are opened

lsusb Used to display the information about USB buses and the devices connected to
them

mailq This command in Linux prints the mail queue i.e the list of messages that are
there in the mail queue
 man Used to display the user manual of any command that we can run on the
terminal

md5sum To verify data integrity using MD5 (Message Digest Algorithm 5)

mkdir Allows the user to create directories. This command can create multiple
directories at once

modinfo Used to display the information about a Linux Kernel module

more Used to view the text files in the command prompt, displaying one screen at
a time in case the file is large (For example log files)

mount Used to mount the filesystem found on a device to big tree structure(Linux
filesystem) rooted at ‘/‘

mpstat Used to report processor related statistics.

mv Used to move one or more files or directories from one place to another in
file system like UNIX

nc(netcat) It is one of the powerful networking tool, security tool or network

monitoring tool.

netstat Displays various network related information such as network connections,

routing tables, interface statistics, masquerade connections, multicast memberships,
etc.

nmcli Used for controlling NetworkManager. nmcli command can also be used to
display network device status, create, edit, activate/deactivate, and delete network
connections

nslookup It is a network administration tool for querying the Domain Name System
(DNS) to obtain domain name or IP address mapping or any other specific DNS
record

od Used to convert the content of input in different formats with octal format
as the default format

passwd Used to change the user account passwords

 paste Used to join files horizontally (parallel merging) by outputting lines
consisting of lines from each file specified, separated by tab as delimiter, to the
standard output

pidof Used to find out the process IDs of a specific running program

ping Used to check the network connectivity between host and server/host

pinky It is a user information lookup command which gives details of all the users
logged in. Unlike finger, in the pinky, you may trim the information of your interest.

pmap Used to display the memory map of a process. A memory map indicates how
memory is spread out

poweroff Sends an ACPI signal which instructs the system to power down

printf Used to display the given string, number or any other format specifier on the
terminal window

ps Used to list the currently running processes and their PIDs along with some
other information depends on different options

pwd It prints the path of the working directory, starting from the root

ranlib Used to generate index to archive

rcp Used to copy files from one computer to another computer

read Reads up the total number of bytes from the specified file descriptor into the
buffer

readelf Used to get information of ELF(Executable and Linkable Format) Files

readlink Used to print resolved symbolic links or canonical file names

reboot Instructs the system to restart or reboot

rename Used to rename the named files according to the regular expression perlexpr

reset Used to initialize the terminal. This is useful once a program dies leaving a
terminal in an abnormal state

restore Used for restoring files from a backup created using dump

return Used to exit from a shell function.

 rev Used to reverse the lines characterwise

rm Used to remove objects such as files, directories, symbolic links and so on

from the file system like UNIX

rmdir Used to remove empty directories from the filesystem in Linux

rmmod Used to remove a module from the kernel

route Used when you want to work with the IP/kernel routing table

rsync It is a software utility for Unix-Like systems that efficiently sync files and
directories between two hosts or machines

sar Used to monitor Linux system’s resources like CPU usage, Memory
utilization, I/O devices consumption, etc.

scp Used to copy file(s) between servers in a secure way.

screen Provides the ability to launch and use multiple shell sessions from a
single ssh session

script Used to make typescript or record all the terminal activities

scriptreplay Used to replay a typescript/terminal_activity stored in the log file that was
recorded by the script command

sdiff Used to compare two files and then writes the results to standard output in
a side-by-side format

sed Used for finding, filtering, text substitution, replacement and text
manipulations like insertion, deletion search etc.

select Used to create a numbered menu from which a user can select an option

seq Used to generate numbers from FIRST to LAST in steps of

INCREMENT

setsid Used to run a program in a new session

shift Shifts/moves the command line arguments to one position left.

showkey prints to standard output either the scan codes or the key code or the
`ascii’ code of each key pressed
 shred Used in order to delete a file completely from hard disk

shutdown Used to shutdown the system in a safe way

sleep Used to create a dummy job. A dummy job helps in delaying the
execution

source Used to read and execute the content of a file(generally set of

commands), passed as an argument in the current shell script

sort Used to sort a file, arranging the records in a particular order

split Used to split large files into smaller files

ssh Protocol used to securely connect to a remote server/system

strace It is one of the most powerful process monitoring, diagnostic,

instructional tool of Linux.

stty Used to change and print terminal line settings

sudo Used as a prefix of some command that only superuser are allowed to run

sum Used to find checksum and count the blocks in a file

sync Used to synchronize cached writes to persistent storage

systemctl Used to examine and control the state of “systemd” system and
service manager

tac Used to concatenate and print files in reverse

Tail Prints the last N number of data of the given input

tar Used to create Archive and extract the Archive files

tee Reads the standard input and writes it to both the standard output and one
or more files

time Used to execute a command and prints a summary of real-time, user CPU
time and system CPU time spent by executing a command when it terminates

top Provides a dynamic real-time view of the running system

touch Used to create, change and modify timestamps of a file

tr It is a command line utility for translating or deleting characters

tracepath Used to traces path to destination discovering MTU along this path

traceroute Prints the route that a packet takes to reach the host

Tree A recursive directory listing program that produces a depth-indented listing

of files

tty It displays the information related to terminal. It basically prints the file
name of the terminal connected to standard input

type Used to describe how its argument would be translated if used as

commands

uname Displays the information about the system

unexpand Converts each spaces into tabs writing the produced output to the standard
output

uniq It is a command line utility that reports or filters out the repeated lines in a
file

unix2dos Converts a Unix text file to DOS format

until Used to execute a set of commands as long as the final command in the
‘until’ Commands has an exit status which is not zero

Uptime Used to find out how long the system is active (running)

useradd Used to add user accounts to your system

usermod Used to change the properties of a user in Linux through the command line

username It provides a set of commands to fetch username and its configurations

from the Linux host

users Used to show the user names of users currently logged in to the current host

userdel Used to delete a user account and related files

vi It is the default editor that comes with the UNIX operating system is called
visual editor.

vmstat It is a performance monitoring command of the system as it gives the

information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, disk and CPU scheduling
 vnstat Used by system administrators in order to monitor network parameters such
as bandwidth consumption or maybe some traffic flowing in or out

w Used to show who is logged on and what they are doing

wall Displays a message, or the contents of a file, or otherwise its standard input,
on the terminals of all currently logged in users

watch Used to execute a program periodically, showing output in fullscreen

wc Used to find out number of lines, word count, byte and characters count in
the files specified in the file arguments

Wget Used to download files from the server even when the user has not logged
on to the system and it can work in background without hindering the current
process

whatis Used to get a one-line manual page descriptions

which Used to locate the executable file associated with the given command by
searching it in the path environment variable

while Used to repeatedly execute a set of command as long as the COMMAND

returns true

who Used to get information about currently logged in user on to system

whoami Displays the username of the current user when this command is invoked

write Allows a user to communicate with other users, by copying lines from one
user’s terminal to others

xargs Used to build and execute commands from standard input. It converts input
received from standard input into arguments of a command

xdg-open Used to open a file or URL in the user’s preferred application

yes Used to print a continuous output stream of given STRING. If STRING is

not mentioned then it prints ‘y’

zdiff Used to invoke the diff program on files compressed via gzip

zdump Used to print the current time in the specified zone or you can say prints the
current time in each zonename named on the command line
zgrep Used to search out expressions from a given a file even if it is compressed

zip It is a compression and file packaging utility for Unix. Each file is stored in
single .zip {.zip-filename} file with the extension .zip