lynx file.html

View an html file or browse the net from text mode.

tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz

Untar a tarred and compressed tarball (*.tar.gz or *.tgz) that you downloaded from the Internet.

tar -xvf filename.tar

Untar a tarred but uncompressed tarball (*.tar).

gunzip filename.gz

Decompress a zipped file (*.gz or *.z). Use gzip (also zip or compress) if you want to compress files.

bunzip2 filename.bz2

Decompress a file (*.bz2) zipped with bzip2 compression utility. Used for big files.

unzip filename.zip

Decompress a file (*.zip) zipped with a compression utility compatible with PKZIP for DOS.

find / -name filename

Find the file called filename on your file system starting the search from the root directory / . The filename may contain wildcards (*,?).

locate filename

Find the file name of which contains the string filename. Easier and faster than the previous command but depends on a database that normally rebuilds at night.

pine

A good text-mode mail reader. Pine will let you read the local mail, e.g. the mail you get from a computer on your home network.

talk username1

Talk to another user currently logged on your machine (or use talk username1@machinename to talk to a user on a different computer). To accept the invitation to the conversation, type the command talk username2. If somebody is trying to talk to you and it disrupts your work, your may use the command mesg n to refuse accepting messages. You may want to use who or rwho to determine the users who are currently logged-in.

mc

Launch the Midnight Commander file manager (looks like Norton Commander) for Linux.

telnet server

Connect to another machine using the TELNET protocol. Use a remote machine name or IP address. You will be prompted for your login name and password--you must have an account on the remote machine to login. Telnet will connect you to another machine and let you operate on it as if you were sitting at its keyboard (almost). Telnet is not very secure--everything you type goes in open text, even your password!.

rlogin server

(Rremote login) Connect to another machine. The login name/password from your current session is used; if it fails you are prompted for a password.

rsh server (remote shell)

Yet another way to connect to a remote machine. The login name/password from your current session is used; if it fails you are prompted for a password.

ftp server