10 Essential Linux Commands Every Developer Should Master

As a software engineer, learning Linux proved to be one of the best investments; understanding the operating system you rely on daily turns small tricks into powerful capabilities over time.

The following ten commands are practical, work on both Linux and macOS, and can greatly improve everyday development workflows.

10. file

Displays information about a specified file, such as image dimensions. file logo.png Example output:

> PNG image data, 16 x 16, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

9. iotop, powertop, nethogs

These utilities help you monitor what’s happening inside a Linux system: iotop – sorts processes by disk write activity and shows frequency. powertop – lists processes by power consumption, useful when you cannot charge your laptop. nethogs – displays processes sorted by network traffic.

8. tee

tee

redirects program output so you can view it and save it simultaneously, for example adding a new entry to /etc/hosts:

echo "127.0.0.1 foobar" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

7. pidof, kill and pkill

These three commands let you control running programs: pidof prints the process ID(s) of a running program, e.g., pidof nginx.

Use the PID with kill to terminate a process, e.g., kill -USR2 $(pidof nginx). pkill is a shortcut to kill processes matching a pattern, e.g., pkill -f nginx.

6. tmux

If you haven’t installed tmux, do so now; it is a powerful terminal multiplexer and session manager.

5. tree

Lists directory contents in a tree‑like format. A concise option to show only directories is:

tree -d

4. find

When searching through dozens of files, find is invaluable. Examples:

List all CSS files (including subdirectories): find . -type f -name "*.css" List all CSS or HTML files:

find . -type f \( -name "*.css" -or -name "*.html" \)

3. htop

A colorful, interactive process monitor with useful shortcuts:

\