ctrl + r in linux / ubuntu terminal command line

After you type the few characters to search, you can press CTRL+R again to browse through the history that matches what you typed.

It will be limited to the history size though.

You just need to press CTRL-R again.

If you just want to see all matching history lines at once, try fc -ln | grep.

mress:10077 Z$ fc -ln -100 | grep \^cd 
cd /Volumes/Development/android-sdk-mac_x86
cd ~/Downloads/MagicTrackpad.pkg
cd Resources
cd English.lproj
cd ../..
cd MagicTrackpadMultiTouchUpdate1.0.pkg
cd ..
cd 

(-100 means "the last 100 commands"; the default is 20, or you can specify a range.)