Unix was developed as a command line interface in the early 1970s with a very rich command vocabulary. DOS followed more than a decade later for the IBM PC, and DOS commands migrated to Windows.

GUIs are great—we wouldn’t want to live without them. But if you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want to get the most out of your operating system (and your keystrokes), you owe it to yourself to get ...

Are you someone who never met a Unix command you didn't like? OK, maybe not. But are there commands you just can't imagine living without? Let's look at some that have made a big difference on my ...

Delete Backs up to erase one character. Backspace Mapped as a backspace key, displaying ^H. Ctrl-u Erases the command line. Ctrl-w Erases the last word on the command line. Ctrl-s Stops flow of output ...

Lifehacker reader Michael writes in with a nifty tip that was lurking in our comments all along, but deserves to see the bright light of posting. If you're already using the Unix-like Cygwin, it's an ...

For decades, Coreutils have been part of the standard repertoire for Linux administrators and developers. Those who wanted to use these tools on Windows with largely identical behavior previously ...

When you enter commands in the Terminal, they are saved in a history that you can scroll through by pressing the up and down arrows. This tip prevents the same item from being saved to the history ...

Last week’s column introduced NTP, the Network Time Protocol and the concept of highly accurate timekeeping. While numerous commands exist to help system administrators maintain fairly accurate time ...

Don't fear the command line if you want to unlock Linux's true potential.

There are several softwares to convert text files from UNIX or Linux to DOS operating systems and vice-versa. However, it always helps to know the manual conversion. In shell programming languages ...