One of the top reasons that I use Linux at all is because of the command line environment. It is far more likely that you’ll see me using my Linux systems via putty from a Windows system than actually sitting at my Linux system itself. Now this isn’t because I’m anti Linux on the desktop or anything, not at all. In fact I do run Linux on my laptop for when I cannot remotely access my server at home such as when we’re traveling yet it’s usually so I can run a terminal.

Read on to learn more about what you can do with the Linux command line.

So enough about why I use the command line, lets talk about what you can do with it. The command line gives you direct access to everything on the system and does so quickly. You can use the command line remotely and do so securely using ssh. This allows you to manipulate files including copying, moving, renaming (moving and renaming are the same thing actually) and editing.

The basic command line tools provided on all Linux systems is from the GNU project which is why you’ll sometimes hear Linux referred to as GNU/Linux. Linux couldn’t exist without the GNU tools. In fact, there is no way it would ever boot at all without their tools doing some of the dirty work.

Some of the most basic tools include bash, top, ls, cp and so on. Along with the basic file manipulation programs are a host of file editors, http, ftp, ssh clients and even bittorrent and all of these programs work as if you were sitting at the machine, even when you’re miles away.