11 Must‑Know Linux Terminal Tricks to Boost Your Productivity

Today we share a concise collection of eleven impressive Linux terminal commands and techniques that can dramatically improve your workflow.

1. Everyday Command‑Line Shortcuts

Useful key bindings that boost efficiency:

CTRL+U – cut text before the cursor

CTRL+K – cut text from the cursor to the end of the line

CTRL+Y – paste

CTRL+E – move cursor to line end

CTRL+A – move cursor to line start

ALT+F – jump to the next word

ALT+B – jump back to the previous word

ALT+Backspace – delete the previous word

CTRL+W – cut the word after the cursor

Shift+Insert – paste text into the terminal

Example of a command with a typo: sudo apt-get intall programname The word "intall" should be corrected to "install". You can move the cursor back with ALT+B and edit the command.

2. SUDO !!

If you forget to run a command with root privileges and receive “permission denied”, you can prepend sudo to the previous command using sudo !!: apt-get install ranger becomes

sudo apt-get install ranger

3. Pause and Run Commands in the Background

Key combinations for job control:

CTRL+Z – pause the foreground job

fg – bring the paused job back to the foreground

Example: while editing a file with nano abc.txt, press CTRL+Z to suspend nano, run other commands, then type fg to resume editing.

4. Use nohup to Keep Commands Running After SSH Logout

The nohup command allows long‑running tasks to continue after you disconnect from an SSH session. Example:

nohup wget http://mirror.is.co.za/mirrors/linuxmint.com/iso//stable/17.1/linuxmint-17.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso &

5. Schedule Commands at Specific Times with at

The at utility runs a command at a given time. Example:

at 10:38 PM Fri
cowsay 'hello'
CTRL+D

Refer to man at for more date‑time formats.

6. Enhancing the Man Pages

Customize the appearance of manual pages: export PAGER=most (install most first) export MANWIDTH=80 to set line width man -H to open a man page in the default browser (requires $BROWSER to be set)

7. Use htop to View and Manage Processes

Install and run htop for an interactive, color‑rich process viewer similar to Windows Task Manager, with keyboard shortcuts for sorting and killing processes.

htop

8. Browse the Filesystem with ranger

ranger

provides a two‑pane, keyboard‑driven file manager in the terminal. After installation, launch it with the ranger command and use arrow keys to navigate.

9. Cancel a Shutdown

If you start a shutdown unintentionally, abort it with: shutdown -c or, if the shutdown is already in progress, try:

pkill shutdown

10. Quickly Kill Stuck Processes

Find a hanging process with ps -ef or htop, then kill it. An even faster method is the xkill command, which lets you click on a window to terminate its process. For a complete system freeze, use the magic SysRq sequence:

REISUB

11. Download YouTube Videos

Install youtube-dl from your package manager and download a video with: youtube-dl url-to-video Copy the video URL from the YouTube share link and paste it into the terminal (Shift+Insert works for pasting).

Conclusion

Hopefully this list provides at least one tip that makes you say, “I didn’t know I could do that!” and helps you become more efficient with the Linux command line.