You don’t need to be a sysadmin to work comfortably in Linux. But as a developer, knowing the right 20% of commands will save you hours of clicking and debugging.

Let’s cut the fluff. Here are the essential Linux commands I use daily.

Navigation & Inspection

bash

pwd # Where am I?

ls -la # List all files (including hidden) with details

cd project/ # Move into directory

cd .. # Go back one level

cd ~ # Go home

Dev tip: Use ls -la | grep keyword to filter files.

File Operations (You’ll use these constantly)

bash

touch index.js # Create empty file

cat file.txt # Print entire file to terminal

head -20 app.log # First 20 lines of log

tail -f app.log # Follow live log output (critical for debugging)

cp -r src/ backup/ # Copy folder recursively

mv oldname.js newname.js # Rename or move

rm file.txt # Delete file (careful!)

rm -rf node_modules/ # Delete folder (double careful!)

Process Management

bash

ps aux # List all running processes

ps aux | grep node # Find Node processes

kill -9 1234 #…