This is a searchable quick reference of the everyday Linux terminal commands, organised by task so you can find the right one without leaving your browser. It is aimed at developers, sysadmins and anyone learning the shell who wants a fast lookup rather than wading through man pages. Every entry has a plain-English description and a one-click copy button.
How it works
The commands are grouped into six categories and rendered as a single client-side list. As you type, the sheet filters live — matching against both the command text and its description — so searching “disk space” surfaces df -h even though those words are not in the command itself. There is no server lookup; the whole cheatsheet ships with the page and filtering is a local string match.
| Category | Typical commands |
|---|---|
| Files & directories | ls, cd, cp, mv, rm, mkdir |
| Viewing & searching | cat, less, grep, find, head, tail |
| Permissions & ownership | chmod, chown, umask |
| Processes & system | ps, top, kill, df, du, free |
| Networking & transfer | ssh, scp, rsync, curl, ss |
| Archives & pipes | tar, gzip, zip, xargs, tee |
High-frequency commands worth knowing cold
find . -name "*.log" -mtime -7 — find log files modified in the last 7 days, which is faster than searching everything when you know the approximate age.
grep -rn "ERROR" . --include="*.log" — recursive search with line numbers, filtered to only log files.
df -h && du -sh * — one-liner to check both filesystem-level and directory-level disk use in the same command.
ps aux | grep myprocess — combine the full process list with a filter to find a named process quickly.
tar -czf backup.tar.gz /path/to/dir — create a compressed archive in one command; c creates, z compresses with gzip, f sets the filename.
Worked example
To find every .log file under the current directory and search its contents:
find . -name "*.log"
grep -r "ERROR" .
find walks the directory tree by filename; grep -r scans file contents recursively. To do both in one pass — find files then search them — chain with xargs:
find . -name "*.log" | xargs grep "ERROR"
Click Copy next to any command to paste it straight into your terminal. Everything runs in your browser — nothing you type or copy is sent anywhere.
Common flags to memorise
ls -lah— long listing, all files (including hidden), human-readable sizeschmod +x— add execute for all;chmod 600— private filesrsync -avz --delete— sync with verbose output, compression, and removal of deleted fileskill -9 PID— force-kill when a process ignores normal signals; usekill PIDfirst