Linux Tools Checklist for Developers

Linux-tools.md

Linux Tools Checklist for Developers

Shell & Navigation

• bash / zsh — shell environments
• pwd — current directory
• cd — change directory
• ls — list files
• tree — directory tree view
• find — search files/directories
• locate — indexed file search
• which / whereis — locate binaries
• alias — shell shortcuts
• history — command history
• clear
• exit

File & Directory Operations

• cp
• mv
• rm
• mkdir
• rmdir
• touch
• ln — symbolic links
• stat
• file
• basename
• dirname
• realpath

Viewing & Editing Files

• vi / vim
• nano
• cat
• less
• more
• head
• tail
• tail -f
• bat — better cat
• diff
• colordiff
• patch

Searching & Text Processing

These become extremely important for backend/devops work.

• grep
• egrep
• ripgrep (rg) — faster grep
• awk
• sed
• cut
• sort
• uniq
• tr
• wc
• paste
• join
• xargs
• jq — JSON processor
• yq — YAML processor
• column

Archiving & Compression

• tar
• zip
• unzip
• gzip
• gunzip
• xz
• 7z

SSH / Remote Access / File Transfer

• ssh
• scp
• sftp
• rsync
• ssh-keygen
• ssh-copy-id
• mosh — stable remote shell
• croc — easy secure file transfer

Networking & Diagnostics

Critical for developers.

• ping
• curl
• wget
• telnet
• nc / netcat
• dig
• nslookup
• host
• traceroute
• mtr
• ss
• netstat
• lsof
• ip
• ifconfig (older systems)
• tcpdump
• nmap
• openssl s_client
• whois

Disk / System Monitoring

• df
• du
• ncdu
• free
• top
• htop
• iotop
• vmstat
• dmesg
• uptime
• uname
• hostname
• journalctl

Processes & Permissions

• ps
• kill
• killall
• pkill
• nohup
• screen
• tmux
• jobs
• bg
• fg
• chmod
• chown
• umask
• sudo
• su

Development Utilities

Very important for real-world development.

• git
• make
• xargs
• env
• printenv
• time
• watch
• tee
• entr
• fzf
• parallel

Logs & Debugging

• tail -f
• journalctl
• less
• grep
• multitail

Package Managers

Depending on distro:

• apt
• apt-cache
• dpkg
• yum
• dnf
• rpm
• snap
• flatpak

Containers & DevOps

Modern developers should know these.

• docker
• docker compose
• kubectl
• helm

Database CLI Tools

Very useful for backend developers.

• mysql
• psql
• redis-cli
• sqlite3
• mongosh

HTTP / API Testing

• curl
• httpie
• wget

Recommended “Must Know Well” List

vim
ssh
scp
rsync
tmux
grep
find
awk
sed
jq
curl
wget
tar
zip
git
diff
less
tail
ps
top
htop
kill
chmod
chown
du
df
ncdu
ss
lsof
dig
ping
netcat
docker
journalctl

Especially Valuable Modern Tools

These are not always taught, but dramatically improve productivity:

• ripgrep (rg) — better grep
• fd — better find
• bat — syntax-highlighted cat
• fzf — fuzzy finder
• jq — JSON query tool
• tmux — persistent sessions
• ncdu — disk usage analyzer
• rsync — deployment & backups
• htop — process viewer