List of useful terminal commands for a beginner. Sorted approximately by difficulty & usefulness.

commands.txt

Commands
---------------
man  # MANual for command
ls  # LiSt files (-l more information, -R recursive)
cd  # Change Directory (if no folder, go home)
pwd  # Print Working Directory
mkdir -p  # MaKe DIRectory (-p create missing parent directories)
touch  # create file
rm -fr  # ReMove directory and all its contents
[TAB key]  # press tab key to autocomplete filename or command
*  # wildcard
nano  # open a file for editing in terminal
cat file1 file2  # conCATenate multiple files
less  # view contents of file
cp  # copy
mv  # move (can also be used to rename)
find . -name "*.txt"  # find files
grep  # find (in file / in output of other command)
history  # previous commands
clear (ctrl+L)  # clear your terminal screen
source somescript.sh  # execute file in terminal (or use ./somescript.sh)
ctrl+U  # delete all text to the left of the cursor
ctrl+R  # search previously typed commands
ctrl+C  # cancel running command
|  # pipe output of command on left to input of command on right
>  # write command output to file
>>  # append command output to file
<  # send file on right to command on left
!!  # previous command
exit (ctrl+D)  # exit
sudo  # run command as superuser
ping www.google.com  # check internet connection
wc  # word count (-l line count)
sort  # sort (-r reverse -R randomly)
head -20  # view first 20 lines of file
tail -20  # view last 20 lines of file
ps -aux  # process list (static)
top  # process list (updating)
kill  # stop some process
chmod ugo+rwx file  # give user, group & owner read, write and execute permissions to file
chown  # change owner of a file
alias hi #'echo hi'  # shorten a command into what you want
env  # list environment variables
export TEST #"test stuff"  # set environment variable
unset TEST  # remove environment variable
xargs  # run input as command
curl -O  # download a file from the internet (-O use same filename)
wget  # download a file from the internet (can download recursively)
diff  # compare 2 files
git diff --no-index  # compare 2 files/folders with color highlighting
cat foo | tr "a" "b" > bar  # replace all "a"'s with "b"'s in file foo and write that to bar
tee myfile  # write to myfile and to the console at the same time
rsync -a --info=progress2 src/foo/ dest/foo  # quickly clone a folder