Which Linux command or utility is simple, powerful, and surprisingly unknown to many people or used less often?

This could be a command or a piece of software or an application.

For example I’m surprised to find that many people are unaware of Caddy, a very simple web server that can make setting up a reverse proxy incredibly easy.

Another example is fzf. Many people overlook this, a fast command-line fuzzy finder. It’s versatile for searching files, directories, or even shell history with minimal effort.

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    6 days ago

    Not powerful, but often useful, column -t aligns columns in all lines. EG

    $ echo {a,bb,ccc}{5,10,9999,888} | xargs -n3
a5 a10 a9999
a888 bb5 bb10
bb9999 bb888 ccc5
ccc10 ccc9999 ccc888
$ echo {a,bb,ccc}{5,10,9999,888} | xargs -n3 | column -t
a5      a10      a9999
a888    bb5      bb10
bb9999  bb888    ccc5
ccc10   ccc9999  ccc888
  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
    12·
    6 days ago

    batcat

    It’s like cat but better. Great for when you just want to look at the contents of a file, without loading a whole text editor.

    Oh also, tldr

    My procedure for learning how to use a cli command goes tldr page -> --help if the tldr fails to help me -> THEN the full manpage

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
      72·
      7 days ago

      Gripes:

      • starship and all these shell frameworks are overbloated. Just write your own prompt command and be done with it.

      • restic, ongoing issue with the author to allow people to backup without a password. Seems lime a no-brainer but he’s being difficult

      • Shimitar@feddit.it
        31·
        7 days ago

        Why would you want password less backups?

        I understand if the reason is ‘just because’, but seriously, why? I just write down the password in a text file for restic --password and I am done.

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
          6·
          7 days ago

          write down the password where though, somewhere I can guarantee it will always be there 10 years from now? That’s a big ask of me

          • jbrains@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            7 days ago

            I keep mine in Bitwarden, I export that data every 3 months and store it in a Backblaze backup, I have it written on a piece of paper stored in a locked fire box in my house, and that paper scanned in my phone.

            I can’t imagine not having at least one of those in 10 years and I can’t imagine all four failing in the same week.

            Does that give you any helpful ideas that would work for you?

            • tetris11@lemmy.ml
              2·
              7 days ago

              None that I can see persisting, as I move around a lot and my backups tend to get boxed up for periods of time before being unboxed. But, I appreciate the effort

          • Shimitar@feddit.it
            3·
            7 days ago

            That is true for lots of things.

            Moreover I use one easy “default” password for all basic stuff, and its always the same known to my spouse and written down on paper.

            At least my offsite backups are protected from prying eyes. Maybe uneeded for local backups, but doesn’t hurt to have.

          • Shimitar@feddit.it
            31·
            7 days ago

            10 years? Boy you are joung :)

            I have encrypted files from w 20 years ago, and unencrypted files from 30 years ago.

            And digitized stuff from analogic of 40 and 50 years ago.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
    4·
    5 days ago

    nmap *your_local_ip_address*

    for example

    nmap 192.168.1.43/24 will show you what devices are connected to the local network, and what ports are open there. really useful, for example, when you forgot the address of your printer or raspi yet again.

    you can also use it to understand what ports on your computer are open from an attacker’s perspective, or simply to figure out what services are running (ssh service).

  • deathbird@mander.xyz
    11·
    7 days ago

    Underrated? I’d say lftp is the best FTP command line client there is. And Midnight Commander is a very very good file browser. I don’t see either praised enough.

  • ElCanut@jlai.lu
    113·
    3 days ago

    Underrated

    Both linked projects have over 60k+ stars on GitHub

    Pick one

  • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
    1031·
    7 days ago

    I think a lot of people don’t realise that yt-dlp works for many sites, not just YouTube

    I used it recently for watching a video from tiktok without having to use their god awful web UI and it was amazing

    • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
      27·
      7 days ago

      I heard about helix from you and I’ve used it for a year and a half or so now, it’s by far the best editor I’ve used so far and I can definitely vouch for it

    • Trent@lemmy.mlEnglish
      17·
      7 days ago

      Just commenting to give more love to helix. It’s my favorite “small quick edits” editor.

    • ObsidianZed@lemmy.world
      8·
      7 days ago

      I’ve actually been testing with fish recently coming from zsh, though I might wait until 4.0 fully releases before I make a more conclusive decision to move or not.

      With that said, I remember looking through omf themes and stumbled onto Starship that branched off one of the themes and really liked the concept.

      • jennraeross@lemmy.world
        8·
        7 days ago

        Helix is a terminal based text editor. It’s much like vim / neovim, but unlike those editors it’s good to go right out of the box, no configuration or plugins needed to make it work well.

        Topgrade is one I haven’t used, but it looks like its intended purpose is to let you upgrade your apps with one command, even if you use multiple different package managers (I.e. if you were on Ubuntu, you could use it to upgrade your apt packages, at the same time as your snap packages, as well as flatpak, nix, and homebrew if you’ve added those.)

      • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
        5·
        7 days ago

        Fish is a replacement of bash that’s a bit more user friendly (has some cool auto completion features out of the box and more sane behaviour like handling of spaces when expanding variables). I personally started to use nutshell recently but unlike fish it’s very different from bash.

        Starship is a “prompt” for various shells (that bit of text in terminal before you enter the command that shows current user and directory in bash). I haven’t used it but AFAIK it has many features like showing current time, integration with git, etc.

        • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
          9·
          7 days ago

          Yep, here’s my Starship prompt, for example:

          So, I have it configured to show:

          • the exit code of the last command (if it’s non-zero),
          • the duration of the last command (if it’s longer than 2 seconds),
          • the time (when the last command ended),
          • the current directory,
          • the current Git branch, and it also shows some Git status information, for example the $ means I have something stashed,
          • and finally the technology in use in a repository/directory, so in this case that repo uses Rust and the compiler version is 1.83.
            • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
              7·
              7 days ago

              Oh, when you’re coding something in a Git repo and you realize that you need to make a different change before you continue coding (e.g. switch to a branch, pull newest changes, or just create a separate smaller commit for part of your change), then you can run git stash push to put away your current changes, then make your other change, and then run git stash pop to bring your ongoing changes back. I recommend reading git stash --help, if you want to use it.

              Sometimes, though, you might end up just taking it into a different direction altogether or simply forget that you had something stashed. That’s when that indicator comes in handy. Because while you can have multiple things stashed, I do find it’s best not to keep them around for too long. If you do want to keep them for longer, then you can always create a branch and commit it as WIP onto there, so that you can push it onto a remote repo.

            • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
              3·
              6 days ago

              Nope, I’m glad to share.

              I personalized it from the “Gruvbox Rainbow” preset from here: https://starship.rs/presets/
              So, you might prefer that, if you’re not, well, me.

              You will need to set up a NerdFont, like the Starship installation guide says.

              Here’s my configuration:

              Spoiler 
              "$schema" = 'https://starship.rs/config-schema.json'

format = """
[$status](bg:color_red fg:color_fg0)\
[](fg:color_red bg:color_orange)\
[$cmd_duration](bg:color_orange fg:color_fg0)\
[](fg:color_orange bg:color_yellow)\
[$time](bg:color_yellow fg:color_fg0)\
[](fg:color_yellow)\
$line_break\
[$directory](bg:color_aqua fg:color_fg0)\
[](fg:color_aqua bg:color_blue)\
[$git_branch\
$git_status](bg:color_blue fg:color_fg0)\
[](fg:color_blue bg:color_bg3)\
[$c\
$rust\
$golang\
$nodejs\
$php\
$java\
$kotlin\
$haskell\
$python\
$docker_context](bg:color_bg3 fg:color_fg0)\
[](fg:color_bg3)\
$line_break\
$line_break"""

palette = 'gruvbox_dark'

[palettes.gruvbox_dark]
color_fg0 = '#ffffff'
color_bg1 = '#3c3836'
color_bg3 = '#665c54'
color_blue = '#458588'
color_aqua = '#689d6a'
color_green = '#98971a'
color_orange = '#d65d0e'
color_purple = '#b16286'
color_red = '#cc241d'
color_yellow = '#d79921'

[status]
disabled = false
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $status '

[username]
format = ' $user '

[directory]
format = " $path "
truncation_length = 3
truncation_symbol = "…/"

[directory.substitutions]
"Documents" = "󰈙 "
"Downloads" = " "
"Music" = "󰝚 "
"Pictures" = " "
"Projects" = "󰲋 "

[git_branch]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $branch '

[git_status]
style = "bg:color_aqua"
format = '$all_status$ahead_behind '

[nodejs]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $version '

[c]
symbol = " "
format = ' $symbol $version '

[rust]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $version '

[golang]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $version '

[php]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $version '

[java]
symbol = " "
format = ' $symbol $version '

[kotlin]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $version '

[haskell]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $version '

[python]
symbol = ""
format = ' $symbol $version '

[cmd_duration]
format = ' 󱦟 $duration '

[time]
disabled = false
time_format = "%R"
format = '  $time '

[line_break]
disabled = false
      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
        1·
        7 days ago

        It does have clojure lsp support, but you’ll probably have to use a command line for most repls.

        • SFloss (they/them)@lemmy.ml
          2·
          6 days ago

          Yeah the clojure lsp support is top notch, but there being no support for “jacking in” to a repl is the big thing keeping me from using helix full time. There’s a way of doing it if you use kitty, but it’s pretty janky.

    • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
      191·
      7 days ago

      I use it occasionally but every time I need to do something a tiny bit more complex than “extract field from an object” I have to spend half an hour studying its manual, at which point it’s faster to just write a Python script doing exactly what I need it to do.

        • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
          2·
          7 days ago

          I actually installed it recently out of curiosity, but I’m hesitant about learning its advanced features like that. At least jq is a standalone tool that’s more ubiquitous than nushell, so you can rely on it even in environments that you don’t fully control (e.g. CI like GitHub Actions). And if you use it in some public code/scripts then other people will be more familiar with it too.

  • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.worldEnglish
    40·
    7 days ago

    I’m a big fan of screen because it will let me run long-running processes without having to stay connected via SSH, and will log all the output.

    I do a lot of work on customers’ servers and having a full record of everything that happened is incredibly valuable for CYA purposes.

    • gkaklas@lemmy.zipEnglish
      15·
      7 days ago

      There is also zellij, which can do the same but also has modern functionality specific for development workspaces!

      (Although screen or tmux will still probably be more widely available on remote machines etc)

    • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
      161·
      7 days ago

      I’d recommend tmux for that particular use. Screen has a lot of extras that are interesting but don’t really follow the GNU mentality of “do one thing and do it well.”

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
        12·
        7 days ago

        Tmux / Screen is like the emacs/vim of the modern day Linux I think.

        Screen is more than capable, but for those who have moved to Tmux, they will absolutely advocate for it.

      • darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        4·
        7 days ago

        When tmux was first released I was already so used to screen that I never really considered switching. What would some convincing arguments be for me to make the effort to switch now?

        • notabot@lemm.ee
          6·
          7 days ago

          The thing that got me to switch was being able to maintain my pane layout between connections. The various window and pane management niceties (naming, swapping, listing and the like) got me to stay. Now you can keep your screen, but you’d have to pry tmux from my cold, dead, tty.

        • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          7 days ago

          Tmux was purpose built for terminal multiplexing. You can assign session names for organizing and manipulating multiple instances. Send keys to and read output from detached sessions. It’s easy to script.

            • Static_Rocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              6 days ago

              Sorry, it was, just not for exploring all of those instances at once. Should have called out the tiling function. Screen also built in a serial terminal emulator and started playing with a few other things.

        • kablammy@sh.itjust.works
          11·
          5 days ago

          This was a few years ago so maybe it has improved, but I found that screen would crash and lose my session history and layout too often. That was bad enough, but when it happened it had some bullshit error message about a dungeon roof falling in. I don’t mind some comedy in code or even the interface, but don’t make light of the user losing their stuff. I tried tmux and it is much more stable than screen was.

    • surfrock66@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      7 days ago

      I know everyone likes tmux but screen is phenomenal. I have a .screenrc I deploy everywhere with a statusbar at the bottom, a set number of pre-defined tabs, and logging to a directory (which is cleaned up after 30 days) so I can go back and figure out what I did. Great tool.

    • villainy@lemmy.world
      7·
      7 days ago

      Woah screen is seeing active development again? There was like a decade where it stagnated. So much so that different distros were packaging different custom feature patches (IIRC only Ubuntu had a vertical split patch by default?) Looking at it now, the new screen maintainers had to skip a version to not conflict with forks that had become popular.

      When tmux stabilized I jumped ship immediately and never looked back.

      • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
        3·
        7 days ago

        I’ve had nohup fail to keep things running after my session ended quite frequently. It’s like it just goes to the next step in the process then gives up.

        • notabot@lemm.ee
          3·
          7 days ago

          It’s likely that you’re using a systemd based system and the admin hasn’t enabled linger for your user.

          • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
            1·
            7 days ago

            The servers are very locked down, so I’m sure that’s part of our compliance requirements. I haven’t looked into fixing it because I just wrote a script to hit Enter every 10 minutes to keep it alive.

            • notabot@lemm.ee
              2·
              7 days ago

              Ha! Faking key presses, truly an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. If it works, it works.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
        2·
        7 days ago

        It’s not as useful, sadly. Nohup disconnects standard input, output, and error. With screen or tmux, you can reattach them later.