Getting started on Linux can be challenging.  Largely because the first time user won’t have any idea how to track down potential problems.  The following commands are essential to get additional information about your system when something goes wrong:

• uname -mr – Shows what kernel version and processor you are running on
• df and fdisk -l – Gives you file system info.  Can help you figure out how things are mounted
• dmesg – Useful for tracking down problems during boot
• tail -f /var/log/messages – Now run the process giving you problems and you might see helpful error messages
• top – Shows the programs which are the top memory and CPU users
• pgrep - Returns the process ids of a given program, allowing you to kill frozen programs

If you’ve got other suggestions, please feel free to comment below.  Thanks!