List of Unix programs

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This is a list of Unix programs. Some of these programs are standard utilities that will be found on any Unix or Unix-like operating system; indeed a system without such basic components as ls or sh could scarcely be described as truly Unix-like. Others are more special-purpose and may not be installed by default. Finally, some items on this list are simply separate applications which happen to have been written for Unix.

Many MS-DOS commands are similar to, or based on these commands. See List of DOS commands for more information.

[[wikibooks:Guide to UNIX|Wikibooks Guide to UNIX]] has more about this subject:

[[wikibooks:Guide to UNIX/Commands|Commands]]

Contents

General user

dirname – Strip non-directory suffixes from a path
dd – Convert and copy a file (Disk Dump)
echo – Print to standard output
env – Show environment variables; run a program with altered environment variables
nohup – Run a command with immunity to hangups outputting to non-tty
file (or stat) – Determine the type of a file
uptime – Print how long the system has been running
sh – The Bourne shell, the standard Unix shell

System Management

fuser – Identify processes by files or sockets
newgrp (or sg) – Log in to a new group
pathchk – Check the validity/portability of filenames
logger – Make entries in the system log

Kernel specific

ipcs – Provide information on IPC facilities
ipcrm – Remove a message queue, semaphore set or shared memory id
date – Print or set the system date and/or time
uname – Print assorted system statistics
dmesg – Print the kernel message buffer

nice – Alter priorities for processes
time – Time a command
top – Produce a dynamic list of all resident processes
wait – Wait for the specified process
renice – Alter the priorities of an already running process
chroot – Change the system root directory for all child processes
timex – Time process shell execution, measure process data and system activity
kill – Send a signal to process, or terminate a process (by PID)
killall – Terminate all processes (in Linux, it's kill by name)
crontab – Crontab file editor
at – Single-time command scheduler
cron – Periodic command scheduler
daemonic – Interface to daemon init scripts
sleep – Delay for specified time
pgrep – Find PIDs of processes by name
pidof – Linux equivalent of pgrep
pkill – Send a signal to process, or terminate a process (by name). Equivalent to Linux killall
ps – Report process status
anacron – Periodic command scheduler

User management and support

su – Start a new process (defaults to shell) as a different user (defaults to root)
logname – Print user's login name
passwd – User and group entries for daemons
write – Send a message to another user
mesg – Control write access to your terminal
who – Show who is logged on (with some details)
users – Show who is logged on (only users names)
finger – Get details about user
w – Show logged-in users and their current tasks
id – Print real/effective UIDs/GIDs
man – Manual browser
locale – Get locale specific information
localedef – Compile locale definitions
sudo – Used to grant permission to carry out specific operations for specific users or groups.

Terminal configuration

stty – Change and print terminal line settings
tty – Print filename of terminal connected to standard input
tput – Initialize a terminal/query terminfo database

Files and texts

man – The standard unix documentation system
info – The GNU/Linux alternative to man

Filesystem Utilities

chgrp – Change the group of a file or directory
chmod – Change the permissions of a file or directory
chown – Change the owner of a file or directory
cp – Copy a file or directory to another location
df – Report disk space
du – Calculate used disk space
fdupes – Find or remove duplicate files within a directory
find – Search for files through a directory hierarchy
fsck – Filesystem check
ln – Link one file/directory to another
ls – List directory contents
mkdir – Make a directory
mkfifo – Make a named pipe
mount – Mount a filesystem
mv – Move or rename a file or directory
pwd – Print the current working directory
rm – Delete a file or directory tree
rmdir – Delete an empty directory
touch – Create a new file or update its modification time
tree – Print a depth-indented tree of a given directory
unlink – System call to remove a file or directory
lsof – list open files

Archivers and compression

afio – Compatible superset of cpio with added functionality
ar – Maintain, modify, and extract from archives. Now largely obsoleted by tar
bzip2 – Block-sorting file compressor
compress – Traditional compressor using the LZW algorithm
cpio – A traditional archiving tool/format
gzip – The gzip file compressor
pax – POSIX archive tool that handles multiple formats.
tar – Tape ARchiver, concatenates files
uncompress – Uncompresses files compressed with compress.
zcat – Prints files to stdout from gzip archives without unpacking them to separate file(s)

Text Processing

awk – A pattern scanning and processing language
banner – Creates ascii art version of an input string for printing large banners
cat – Concatenate files to standard output
cksum – Print the CRC checksum and bytecount of a file (see also MD5)
cmp – Compare two files byte for byte
comm – Sort two files and compare them line for line
csplit – Split a file into sections determined by context lines
cut – Remove sections from each line of a file or standard input
diff – Compare two files line by line
expand – Convert tabs to spaces
fc – Processes the command history list
fold – Wrap each input line to fit within the given width
grep – Print lines matching a pattern (now largely superseded by egrep)
head – Output the first parts of a file
iconv – Convert the encoding of the specified files
join – Join lines of two files on a common field
less – Improved more-like text pager
merge – Three way merge of files (see also paste)
more – Pager
nkf – Convert Japanese characters
nl – Number the lines of a file
od – Dump files in various formats, e.g. octal
paste – Merge lines of files
patch – Change files based on a patch file
rev – reverse lines of a file
sed – Stream EDitor
sort – Sort lines of text files
split – Split a file into pieces
tac – cat in reverse — displays files to standard output in reverse order starting at the end of the file
tail – Output the tail end of files
tee – Read from standard input, write to standard output and files
tr – Translate characters
tsort – Perform a topological sort
unexpand – Convert spaces to tabs
uniq – Remove duplicate lines from a sorted file
uudecode – Decodes a binary file that was used for transmission using electronic mail
uuencode – Encodes a binary file for transmission using electronic mail
wc – Word/line/byte count

Editors

ed – Traditional line-based Unix text editor
emacs – Powerful Lisp-based text editor and general computing environment
ex – Text editor, often a symbolic link to vi (or vim) which causes it to run in ex emulation mode
NEdit – The multi-purpose X11 editor
nano – Clone of pico
pico – PIne's message COmposition editor
sam – Bitmapped text editor with client-server design, by Rob Pike
vi – Visual text editor
vim – Vi IMproved, vi clone with syntax highlighting and many other enhancements
XEmacs – Popular version of emacs that is derived from GNU emacs

Communication, networking and remote access

Apache webserver
HylaFAX – Fax server
netcat – "TCP/IP Swiss Army knife"
NFS – Network filesystem
OpenVPN
rsh, SSH, telnet – Remote consoles
Samba – SMB and CIFS client and server for UNIX
talk – Talk to another logged-in user
uustat – a Basic Networking Utilities (BNU) command that displays status information about several types of BNU operations
uux – Remote command execution over UUCP

Email programs

elm – Unix mail utility program
mail – Original Email utility
mailx – Improved Email utility
Mutt – Curses based mail reader

Network system services

xinetd – replacement for inetd
fingerd – a daemon for finger – a program used return a human-readable status report on either the system at the moment or a particular person in depth
inetd – a daemon on many Unix systems that manages Internet services

Network Utilities

dhcpd – the DHCP daemon
ifconfig – a tool used to configure a network interface for TCP/IP
ping – a network tool that tests of whether a particular host is up and reachable on the network
pppd – Point-to-Point protocol daemon
tcpd – Secures programs launched from inetd

Network monitoring and security

Wireshark – a protocol analyzer, or "packet sniffer", similar to tcpdump, that adds a GUI frontend, and more sorting and filtering options
Ethereal and tethereal – a feature rich protocol analyzer
ettercap – a tool for network protocol analysis
John the Ripper – password cracking software
Nmap – free port scanning software
Nessus – a comprehensive open-source network vulnerability scanning program
SATAN – the Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks – a testing and reporting tool that collects information about networked hosts
Snoop – Solaris packet sniffer
Snort – an open source network intrusion detection system
tcpdump – a computer network debugging tool that intercepts and displays TCP/IP packets being transmitted or received

Programming tools

Script Interpreters

awk – Standard Unix scripting and text manipulation tool.
perl – Perl scripting language.
Python – Python scripting language.
bash – Bourne Again SHell, standard shell and a script interpreter on Linux systems.

The classic UNIX environment includes a basic set of broadly available programming tools, but in the 21st century this classic environment is increasingly rare, as Unix-like operating system distributions diversify. Some include vastly more, and more modern and sophisticated, programming tools and environments, whereas others, focussing on serving a less technical audience, may disinclude even the most rudimentary programming utilities. Commands most familiar to a prior generation of UNIX users include:

admin – Administer SCCS files.
c99 – C programming language.
cc – C compiler.
ld – Program linker.
ctags – Generate tags file summarising location of objects in source files.
distcc – Tool for distributing compiles across multiple machines.
f77 – Fortran 77 compiler.
gcc – GNU Compiler Collection C frontend (also known as GNU C Compiler)
dbx – (System V and BSD) Symbolic debugger.
gdb – GNU symbolic debugger.
lex – Lexical scanner generator.
yacc – LALR parser generator.
m4 – Macro language.
make – Automate builds.
nm – List symbols from object files.
rmdel – remove a delta from an SCCS file.
strip – Remove debugging symbols from object files.
strace – (Linux) or truss (Solaris) Trace system calls with their arguments and signals. Useful debugging tool, but does not trace calls outside the kernel, in the address space of the process(es) being watched.
ltrace – (Linux) Trace dynamic library calls in the address space of the watched process.
ktrace – (BSD) Analogous to strace.

expr – Evaluate expressions
exit – Exit shell, optionally with return code
return – Return from shell function
false – Return a value that evaluates as False
true – Return a value that evaluates as True
xargs – Build and execute command lines from standard input
basename – Returns the final component of a path
batch – Runs jobs when the system load level permits
unset – Unsets a shell variable
break – terminate a loop before maturity
continue – Skip the current iteration of a loop
strings – Print strings of printable characters found in a file
times
test – Test an expression
hash – Command that remembers or reports command path names
shift

User interfaces

X11 – Graphical user interface (GUI)

Desktops/Graphical User Interfaces

Blackbox and its variants (including Fluxbox and Waimea)
CDE – Common Desktop Environment, most commonly found on proprietary UNIX systems
Enlightenment – an open source window manager for the X Window System
Fvwm and its variant Fvwm95, which has been modified to behave like Windows 95
GNOME – GNU Network Object Model Environment
IceWM – ICE Window Manager
JWM – Joe's Window Manager
KDE – K Desktop Environment
Quartz Compositor – Apple's GUI interface for the Darwin BSD based operating system Mac OS X
Window Maker
WMI – Window Manager Improved
XFce – a desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms

Shells

bash – Bourne Again SHell, standard shell on Linux systems.
csh – C shell.
ksh – Korn shell, standard shell on most proprietary Unix systems.
rc – originally written for Plan 9.
sh – Bourne shell, only shell present on all UNIX and Unix-like systems.
tcsh – TENEX C shell, standard shell on BSD systems.
zsh – Z shell.

ClamAV – E-mail virus scanner.

Enigmail – Graphical interface to gpg for Mozilla Application Suite and Mozilla Thunderbird.
gpg – GNU Privacy Guard, a complete and free replacement for PGP (to do file and email encryption and signature)
openssl – Secure Sockets Layer and general crypto library.
pinepgp – Filters which enable pine to use signed/encrypted email.
mcrypt -- Replacement for the legacy crypt program, can also make OpenPGP-compatible files.

apt – Front-end for dpkg or rpm
debconf – Debian package configuration management system
drakconf – Front-end configuration utility for Mandriva Linux
dpkg – The Debian package manager
emerge – A frontend to portage
rpm – Originally the package manager for Red Hat Linux, now used by several distributions including Mandriva Linux
portage – The Gentoo Linux package manager
urpmi – Front-end to rpm, used by Mandriva Linux
pacman – A package manager used primarily by Arch Linux
YaST - System management utility mainly used by SuSE
yum - Front-end for rpm, used by Fedora

OS X/Darwin specific programs

fink – The Fink package manager

AbiWord
Gnumeric
OpenOffice.org
KOffice

Amarok – Audio jukebox
Ardour – Digital audio workstation for multitrack HD recording and editing
Audacity – Sound recording and editing program
Baudline – Audio recorder, analyzer, and player
GIMP – Powerful image manipulation package
GStreamer – Plugin-based multimedia framework
ImageMagick – Image conversion library
Inkscape – Vector graphics editor
mpg123 – MP3 player
MPlayer – Video player
Rhythmbox – Audio jukebox similar to Apple's iTunes
Rosegarden – Powerful digital audio workstation
SoX – Sound conversion tool
Totem – Media player
transcode – Flexible command-line media encoding tool
VLC media player – Video player
xine – Video Player
XMMS – Winamp-like multimedia player

Dillo – Extremely light-weight web browser
Galeon – Light-weight old GNOME web browser
Epiphany – Light-weight GNOME web browser
Konqueror – KDE web browser
Links – Console based web browser
ELinks – Enhanced links
lynx – Console based web browser
Mozilla Application Suite – Graphical cross platform web browser & email client
Mozilla Firefox – Extensible Web browser from Mozilla
Mozilla Thunderbird – Extensible Email client from Mozilla
Opera – Web browser and e-mail client
w3m – Console based web browser

Desktop Publishing

Groff – Traditional typesetting system
LaTeX – Popular TeX macro package for higher-level typesetting
lp – Print a file (on a line printer)
Passepartout – Desktop publishing program
pr – Convert text files for printing
printf – Format and print data
Scribus – Desktop publishing program
TeX – High-quality macro-based typesetting system
troff – The original and standard Unix typesetting system

DB2
Firebird
MySQL
Oracle
PostgreSQL
Progress (DBMS) [link]
SQLite
Sybase

Mathematical and scientific software

maxima – Symbol manipulation program.
units – Unit conversion program.
octave – Numerical computing language (mostly compatible with Matlab) and environment.
R – Statistical programming language.

Desktop utilities

dc – Reverse-Polish desk calculator which supports unlimited precision arithmetic
fortune – Fortune cookie program that prints a random quote
bc – An arbitrary precision calculator language with syntax similar to the C programming language.
cal – Displays a calendar

Radio Amateur utilities

[TLF] – Contest logging software
[KLog] – Logging software

External links

[FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory] – A catalog of useful free software
[Freshmeat software catalog] – The Web's largest index of Unix and cross-platform software
[SourceForge] – The world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications
[Linux Links: Software] – Linux software catalog
[Linux Online - Applications] – Linux software catalog

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