Linux Commands Every Developer Must Know

Linux powers 96.3% of the world's top one million servers. Whether you deploy to AWS, run Docker, or SSH into a VPS, Linux command-line proficiency is non-negotiable.

File Operations

find /var/www -name "*.php" -type f
find . -mtime -1 -type f
grep -rn "DB_PASSWORD" --include="*.env" .
du -sh /var/www/*
find . -name "*.php" | xargs wc -l | tail -1

Process Management

lsof -i :8080
ss -tlnp | grep 8080
htop
nohup php artisan queue:work &
pkill -f "queue:work"

Networking

curl -I https://example.com
dig example.com +short
scp local.txt user@server:/remote/path/
rsync -avz ./project/ user@server:/var/www/project/

Text Processing

cat access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10
sed -i 's/old_value/new_value/g' config.php
tail -f storage/logs/laravel.log | grep --color ERROR
cat data.json | jq '.users[] | .name'

Permissions

chmod -R 775 storage bootstrap/cache
chown -R www-data:www-data storage bootstrap/cache
chmod +x deploy.sh

These commands form the foundation of every deployment pipeline, debugging session, and infrastructure task.