Useful programs

Here I will list useful commands for Linux, mostly so that newcomers may discover them.
Use man and info for more information regarding the commands listed below (you will most likely need to have them installed i order the view there documentation).

Debian only

  • aptitude, an apt-get text GUI I now prefer using this instead of apt-get.
  • apt-cache ("search" for packages)
  • apt-file ("search" for a file in all packages)
  • apt-get ("install" packages)
  • make-kpkg - build Debian kernel packages from Linux kernel sources

Cool commands

  • anjuta (a cool editor, also a Gnome IDE but I don't approve of IDE usage :)
  • cvs - Concurrent Versions System
  • ddd - The Data Display Debugger (GUI for gdb)
  • doxygen - Generate nice API documentations from your source files
  • fuser - identify processes using files or sockets (fix problems like umount: /cdrom: device is busy)
  • gcc - GNU project C and C++ compiler
  • gdb - The GNU Debugger (debug you ".exe" files)
  • latex - structured text formatting and typesetting
  • lsof - list open files
  • mmv - move/copy/append/link multiple files by wildcard patterns
  • perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language (cool scripting language)
  • strace - trace system calls and signals
  • valgrind - a memory debugger for x86-linux (detect memory leeks, deadlocks and more)
  • xargs - build and execute command lines from standard input
  • The operators < , > and ¦ (use pipes when needing godlike powers)

Basic commands

  • df - report filesystem disk space usage (se option -h)
  • du - estimate file space usage (se option -h and --max-depth)
  • find - search for files in a directory hierarchy (find files by name, size, modification date and more)
  • grep - print lines matching a pattern (find text in you code files)
  • info - read Info documents (like man but with links)
  • kill - send a signal to a process (need some program terminated?)
  • killall - kill processes by name (the program that makes the mob envious)
  • less - opposite of more (read files with scrolling)
  • ls - list directory contents
  • man - an interface to the on-line reference manuals
  • ps - report a snapshot of the current processes.
  • sort - sort lines of text files
  • top - display Linux tasks
  • wc - print the number of newlines, words, and bytes in files