Linux is an operation system, released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. If you want to install linux, you can choose a distribution , which fits your needs. When you are working for a company, it is often the case, that you can't change the operation system. So I will focus on the commands, which are most commonly present on every installation, or which can be easily installed by a package manager. This will lead to a distribution independent environment.
Almost everything on a linux system can be accessed via a file. These files should be placed within certain directories, defined in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard , which is managed by the linux foundation .
This is a incomplete list of some base folders within a linux system.
| directory | description |
|---|---|
/ |
filesystem root. |
/boot |
boot loader, kernels, initrd. often as a own partition. |
/dev |
all devices, like hard drives, cpus ect. |
/proc |
virtual file system, amongst other things displaying processes as files. |
/tmp |
temporary files, which may be deleted after system reboot. |
/etc |
system-wide configuration files. |
/home |
user home directory, which has often an own mount point. |
/mnt |
temporary mounted file systems like usb drives. |
/opt |
optional software packages. |
/root |
root home directory. |
/sbin |
.
ip or
init system binaries like
|
/bin |
.
mv or
ls ,
cp single user mode commands like
|
/usr |
installation target for distribution packages. |
/var |
files, which may change over time like log files. |
More or less all distributions out there will use these directories in a proper way.
Your development environment will be found in your
home folder.
Packages like
htop will use the information from the
/proc folder to show all running processes in a convinient way.
From time to time, you might execute some tasks which are distribution specific. Hopefully, this is will stay a small list. I will take it as small as possible.
$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/head
coreutils: /usr/bin/heador try
$ command -v head | xargs dpkg -S
coreutils: /usr/bin/head
using the
app-portage/gentoolkit
$ equery belongs /bin/head
* Searching for /bin/head ...
sys-apps/coreutils-8.31-r1 (/bin/head)$ dpkg -L coreutils | grep /usr/bin | head
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/[
/usr/bin/arch
/usr/bin/b2sum
/usr/bin/base32
/usr/bin/base64
/usr/bin/basename
/usr/bin/chcon
/usr/bin/cksum
/usr/bin/comm]
using the
app-portage/gentoolkit
$ equery files coreutils -f cmd | head
/bin/basename
/bin/cat
/bin/chgrp
/bin/chmod
/bin/chown
/bin/chroot
/bin/cp
/bin/cut
/bin/date
/bin/dd