this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Linux

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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.

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

dust: better version of du. There's also diskonaut which is an interactive tool.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

motion

After spending years dealing with shady freeware and junk software on windows, I was floored by how easy and nonchalantly I was able to set up a simple security camera on my PC

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

inxi saves you time 90% of the time that you would use for lsXXX commands and grepping. Really useful for quick hardware and kernel module checks.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I like batcat aka bat, but nominate the humble ‘cat’ instead.

Want to copy a disk image to a device? You can use cat for that: cat file.iso>/dev/sdf

What to copy local stdout over ssh? Use cat.

ls -l | ssh myhost 'cat >out.txt'

That’s simple and surprisingly powerful.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

probably well known at this point but rsync is incredible and I use it all the time

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

paste. I don't think a lot of people know this command, but it can be handy at times

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

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
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

all of them

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