Bash Cheat Sheet

Preparations

Finding a Shell

On all *nix systems, you will already have a shell - if you run a graphical desktop, look for something called “terminal”.

On MacOS, there is the terminal.app - I prefer iTerm.

On windows, use the Windows Subsystem for Linux. For quick tryouts you may already have a gitbash installed.

Another quick way to get a shell is using linux image within Docker, e.g.

docker run -it ubuntu /bin/bash

You can also run a virtual machine on Windows

General Tips & Info

Everything you enter after the prompt is either an internal shell command (e.g. cd, exit, echo - depending on the shell) or the name of an executable found in the path.

If it is neither, you get a “command not found”.

Cheat Sheet

Various Things

date # display or set date and time
df # display free disk space
du # display disk usage statistics

Things you may encounter

sudo # execute a command as another user, usually root

Navigation in the Filesystem