Your First 5 Minutes with Oracle Linux 10

#oracle#linux#bash#tutorial

So, you’ve heard the news? Oracle Linux 10 is here! Released just a couple of months ago (on June 26th, 2025), it’s the latest and greatest, stable and ready for action.

If you're a newbie staring at a terminal prompt and wondering, "What now?!", don't panic. We've all been there. This guide is your friendly, no-fluff cheat sheet for your first five minutes. Let's jump in and get our hands dirty with the five essential commands you need to know.

1. dnf upgrade - Let's Get Current

First things first, your system needs to be up-to-date. Think of this like updating all the apps on your phone. The magic command for that on Oracle Linux (and other RHEL-family distros) is dnf. While dnf update is a common command, the more modern and precise command is dnf upgrade. Both will get the job done.

Open your terminal and type:

sudo dnf upgrade

• sudo means "do this as the super-user" (admin), so it will ask for your password.
• dnf is the package manager that handles all the software.
• upgrade tells it to fetch and install the latest versions of everything on your system.

You'll see it checking for updates and then showing you what it will do. Type Y and hit Enter when it asks.

Expected Output:

...
Upgrade  12 Packages
Total download size: 45 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
...
Complete!

Boom! You're running the latest bits.

2. ls & pwd - "Where Am I? What's Here?"

The terminal doesn't show you a pretty folder icon; it shows a text-based view of your directories (what you might call a folder). The two most fundamental questions are:

• What is my current directory? Ask with pwd (Print Working Directory).
  

  pwd
  

  Expected Output:
  

  /home/oluser
  

• What's inside this directory? Ask with ls (LiSt).
  

  ls
  

  Expected Output:
  

  Documents  Downloads  Music  Pictures
  

Pro Tip: Spice it up! Try ls -l for a detailed list or ls -la to see all files, including the hidden ones (they start with a dot .).

3. cat - Peek Inside a File (The Easy Way)

You don't always need a heavy text editor to read a file. For a quick look, cat (short for concatenate) is your best friend. It simply dumps the file's contents right to the screen.

Let's read a very important system file that tells us what version we're running:

cat /etc/os-release

Expected Output:

NAME="Oracle Linux"
VERSION="10.0"
ID="ol"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="10.0"
PRETTY_NAME="Oracle Linux 10.0"
...
ORACLE_LINUX_10=1

You'll see the info pop up, proudly proclaiming ORACLE_LINUX_10! This is a perfect, quick way to verify you're on OL 10.

4. systemctl - Control Your Services

Services are the background programs that make your system work (like networking, web servers, etc.). The command to check on them is systemctl.

To see if a key service (let's use firewalld, the firewall) is running, type:

systemctl status firewalld

Expected Output:

● firewalld.service - firewalld - dynamic firewall daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/firewalld.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2025-08-27 10:15:43 EDT; 1h 25min ago
       Docs: man:firewalld(1)
   Main PID: 1234 (firewalld)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 49648)
     Memory: 24.4M
        CPU: 987ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/firewalld.service
             └─1234 /usr/bin/python3 -s /usr/sbin/firewalld --nofork --nopid

You'll get a nice, color-coded output showing if it's active (running) or not. If it were not running, you might see Active: inactive (dead) or Active: failed. This is your go-to for starting, stopping, or investigating services.

5. hostnamectl - See Your System's VIP Pass

This is a cool, all-in-one command for checking your system's identity. It gives you a neat summary of the hostname, the OS, and the kernel version.

Just type:

hostnamectl

Expected Output:

     Static hostname: ol10-vm
           Icon name: computer-vm
             Chassis: vm
          Machine ID: a1b2c3d4e5f6677890abc12345678901
             Boot ID: 1a2b3c4d5e6f7890abc123456789abcd
      Virtualization: kvm
    Operating System: Oracle Linux 10.0
         CPE OS Name: cpe:/o:oracle:linux:10:0
              Kernel: Linux 6.8.0-10.0.0.1.el10.x86_64
        Architecture: x86-64

It's the quickest way to get a sleek status report for your machine. No scrolling required!

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And that's it! Five commands in five minutes. You've updated your system, navigated around, peeked at a file, checked a service, and confirmed your system info. You're no longer a terminal tourist; you're an active user!

What Oracle Linux 10 topics should we dive into next? Let us know in the comments!

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Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and the author of The Rose Theory series on math and physics.