Jack Wallen / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETMuch to the chagrin of those who would like to malign the Linux operating system, it’s actually quite easy to use. Thanks to modern GUI desktop environments and applications, anyone can jump into the fray and know what they’re doing.On the rare occasions when trouble arises, you might want to know a few commands to help you out. The problem is that there are so many commands available within the realm of Linux, which makes it challenging to know which commands are the best options. Also: The first 5 Linux commands every new user should learnSure, you can learn any of the commands that display system information (such as top, free, iostat, htop, vmstat, and iftop), but those tools will only get you so far. What is more valuable is skipping to the command that can really help you if something goes wrong. With that introduction out of the way, let’s get to the commands.1. dmesgBack when I first started using Linux, dmesg was my best friend. Essentially, dmesg is used to examine all messages that are created after the bootloader phase of the kernel. In other words, you might find a clue for anything you could possibly troubleshoot right here. Also: I’m a command-line pro and this is the best terminal app I’ve ever used, thanks to AIUnlike the dmesg of old, you now have to run the command with sudo privileges, so: sudo dmesgThis will print quite a bit of output you can scroll through, making it a bit challenging to find what you’re looking for, and much of what you read will most likely seem like gibberish. The good news is that errors print out in red, so you can quickly scroll to find anything that might be wrong. Also: 5 things to do with the Linux terminal on your Android phone – including my favoriteThere’s a way to make this even easier. Let’s say you’re experiencing an error, and you want to see if it is logged via dmesg as it happens. To do that, issue the command: dmesg -wThis will display the output from dmesg as it happens, so when an error occurs, you’ll see it written in the terminal window and can troubleshoot from there. More