What’s the most useful Linux command or tool that most new users overlook?

General Discussions
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ive been using Linux for a while now, but I’m always looking for ways to improve my workflow or discover hidden tools. I’d love to hear your recommendations for Linux commands or utilities that are incredibly useful, but often overlooked by new users.

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Linux Command : you can literally do magic with coreutils and linux-util piping
Tools :

there is alot more and list go on but here a name of few

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3

This is definitely an important topic. Thanks for raising it, as we all need the reminder. Here are some articles from our sister site that would fit in here:

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For me personally, a few worth mentioning are:

ncdu brilliant for cleaning up disk space (sudo ncdu / and you’ll instantly see where the big files are).


journalctl -xe a must-learn for debugging system issues.


ss -tuln better than netstat for checking open ports.


Also, beyond tools, I’d say pushd, popd, and dirs are criminally overlooked. Hardly anyone uses them, but they make moving between directories way faster than typing long cd paths over and over.

Example:

pushd /var/www/html
# the do your work.
popd
# instantly back to /var/www/html

pushd isn’t “better” than cd for moving to directories, but it’s a lot smarter when you’re jumping between directories over and over.

Each time you run pushd, it adds your current directory to a stack, so you can easily return to it later with popd.

With cd, once you move, the last path is gone unless you retype it or use cd -, which only remembers one previous location.

For me, it’s faster than cd when you’re hopping between paths during troubleshooting or editing config files

You can also view your directory history using dirs:

dirs -v
0  /etc/nginx
1  /var/www
2  /home/hydn

Then jump straight to one by number:

pushd +1
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6

Great blogs helped me out lots.

You’re totally right —pushd, popd, and dirs are surprisingly underused, even among people who spend a lot of time in the terminal.

Most shell users (especially in Bash or Zsh) stick to simple cd navigation

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7

Good discussion, some familiar tools and others I have never used. Thanks for the information and the examples, images and references.

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