this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
96 points (94.4% liked)

Linux

47991 readers
1015 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What do you advice for shell usage?

  • Do you use bash? If not, which one do you use? zsh, fish? Why do you do it?
  • Do you write #!/bin/bash or #!/bin/sh? Do you write fish exclusive scripts?
  • Do you have two folders, one for proven commands and one for experimental?
  • Do you publish/ share those commands?
  • Do you sync the folder between your server and your workstation?
  • What should've people told you what to do/ use?
  • good practice?
  • general advice?
  • is it bad practice to create a handful of commands like podup and poddown that replace podman compose up -d and podman compose down or podlog as podman logs -f --tail 20 $1 or podenter for podman exec -it "$1" /bin/sh?

Background

I started bookmarking every somewhat useful website. Whenever I search for something for a second time, it'll popup as the first search result. I often search for the same linux commands as well. When I moved to atomic Fedora, I had to search for rpm-ostree (POV: it was a horrible command for me, as a new user, to remember) or sudo ostree admin pin 0. Usually, I bookmark the website and can get back to it. One day, I started putting everything into a .bashrc file. Sooner rather than later I discovered that I could simply add ~/bin to my $PATH variable and put many useful scripts or commands into it.

For the most part I simply used bash. I knew that you could somehow extend it but I never did. Recently, I switched to fish because it has tab completion. It is awesome and I should've had completion years ago. This is a game changer for me.

I hated that bash would write the whole path and I was annoyed by it. I added PS1="$ " to my ~/.bashrc file. When I need to know the path, I simply type pwd. Recently, I found starship which has themes and adds another line just for the path. It colorizes the output and highlights whenever I'm in a toolbox/distrobox. It is awesome.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Shell scripts are one of the things that makes Linux what it is. They're relatively easy to create, powerful, etc. It was the thing that drove me to it from Windows in the first place.

One thing I would recommend against is creating dozens of utility scripts and/or aliases for things you run frequently. I have found it's much better in the long-run to simply learn the "proper" commands and switches. If you use them often enough you start to type them very quickly. When you create helpers you start to learn your own ecosystem and will be lost on any system that doesn't have your suite of helper apps installed.

There are exceptions to this to be sure (e.g. I always alias 'l=ls -FhlA') but I would specifically avoid the podup and poddown ones myself. I've gotten very quick at typing "docker run -it --rm foo" just by rote repetition.

You're free to do as you like though. Maybe you'll only run Linux on your own desktop so that's all that matters. But something to keep in mind. I would at least learn the commands very well first and then later alias or script them for convenience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I agree. However... I do have a public repo with my helper scripts in case I need to set them up on a new machine. best of both worlds!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Welcome to the world of funny when you come across an airgapped server which doesn't have the tools you use.

Eg: RHEL doesn't have vim installed, now I can deal with nano but I'm way slower to do that. Luckily IaC has made my life somewhat easier

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Agreed, IaC has helped that process a lot. I just used to curse.