> Make aliases for most Linux commands. I have to disagree here: knowing the actual commands and their arguments is far more valuable than the small amount of

> Make aliases for most Linux commands. I have to disagree here: knowing the actual commands and their arguments is far more valuable than the small amount of typing saved. Read the man page every time you use the command if you have to, but at least you'll know why `tar zxf` failed on that .tar.bz2 file. As other commenters have mentioned, relying on aliases leaves you feeling crippled when working on systems that don't have them. If you're repeating commands often enough that you'd like an alias like nginx-reload for them, consider using your shell's history feature instead. I also make a point of changing the prompt color on each of my systems, because it's much more obvious than reading the prompt for the $host entry.