Tested with mainly Ubuntu-based distributions. List of Linux commands which are useful but not frequently used. See online or local man pages for details.
Last edited: June 11, 2014
System Information
uname -a # Details of kernel, processor, machine, OS
cat /proc/version # Detailed kernel version. More details about /proc.
cat /etc/*-release # See details of distribution
lsb_release -a # See details of distribution
service --status-all # status of init services; [+] Running, [-] Not running, [?] Unknown
sudo initctl list # List & status of upstart jobs. More at UbuntuBootupHowto.
Hardware Information
cat /proc/cpuinfo # Shows CPU details
free -mt # Shows details of memory usage
sudo dmidecode -t memory # Shows details of RAM slots
df -hT # Report disk type, space usage, mount points
sudo fdisk -l # Lists partition table of all disks
blkid # Lists UUID and type of all disks
ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid # Lists drives by UUID
Users and Groups
groups <username> # Lists group memberships of the user
id -u <username> # Prints user-id of user
id -g <username> # Prints group-id of user
id <username> # Print user and group information of user
sudo passwd <username> # Change user password
sudo usermod -d /new/home/dir <username> # Change user home directory
- Disk usage (size) of directories:
du -achdu -schdu -ch /home/user - List USB Devices
lsusb -t - apt installed packages:
less /var/log/apt/history.logzless /var/log/apt/history.log.1.gzdpkg --get-selections | sed -n 's/\t\+install$//p'Automatically installed packages</var/lib/apt/extended_states awk -v RS= '/\nAuto-Installed: *1/{print$2}' - Image to pdf:
convert *.png out.pdfconvert -compress jpeg *.png out.pdf
Last edited: June 11, 2014