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An Introduction to Linux¶

This article seeks to give you some quick exploration of Linux. For a deeper training, scroll down to Training.

Linux is designed to make the details of the hardware it is running on not matter so much to users. It gives you a somewhat common experience on any hardware.

It also goes a bit further, providing some description of the harware as part of the running “file system”.

Typical Command-line Utilities¶

Most of what a new user experiences with Linux is the command-line.

Table 1 Typical Linux commands¶
command	function	command	function
pwd	show current directory	echo	print/dump value
cd	change current directory	env	dump environment variables
ls	list directory contents	export	set environment variable
chmod	change file permissions	history	dump command history
cp	copy files	man	get help on command
mv	move files	apropos	show list of man pages
rm	remove files	find	search for files
mkdir	make directory	tar	create/extract file archives
rmdir	remove directory	gzip	compress a file
cat	dump file contents	gunzip	decompress a file
less	progressively dump file	du	show disk usage
vi	edit file (complex)	df	show disk free space
nano	edit file (simple)	mount	mount disks
head	trim dump to top	tee	write dump to file in parallel
tail	trim dump to bottom	hexdump	readable binary dumps