Linux Command Line for Windows Users: 20 Commands to Survive a Server

⏱ 1 min readUpdated 28 September 2026

Sooner or later a data job means logging in to a Linux server over SSH. These commands cover the first weeks.

Task Linux Windows equivalent
Where am I? pwd cd
List files (detailed) ls -lh dir
Change folder cd /var/log cd
Show a file cat file.txt, less file.txt type
Last lines of a log, live tail -f app.log —
Search inside files grep -i "error" app.log findstr
Find files by name find . -name "*.csv" dir /s
Copy / move / delete cp / mv / rm copy / move / del
Make a folder mkdir -p a/b mkdir
Disk space df -h, du -sh * —
Running processes top, ps aux Task Manager
Permissions chmod 644 file —
Run as admin sudo command Run as administrator
Download curl -O URL curl
Zip / unzip tar -czf a.tgz folder, unzip f.zip Compress

Pipes: small tools, big results

grep "ERROR" app.log | cut -d' ' -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head

“Count errors per day, most first” — five tiny commands joined with |.

⚠️ rm has no Recycle Bin. Double-check the path, and never run rm -rf on a line you copied without understanding it.
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