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] 53 points 4 months ago (8 children)

grep goes crazy if you know your regex

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

glances! Way better than top and does a bazillion cool things!

https://nicolargo.github.io/glances/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

I loved glances until I switched to btop with Hot Purple Traffic Light theme, and I doubt I'll switch again. Check it out!

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure how underrated it is but the exec feature in find is so useful, there are so many bulk tasks that would just be incredibly difficult otherwise but instead are just one line

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

awk

..for parsing the output of other commands quickly and simply. Then that parsed output can be used to create simple log messages or be passed as args to other scripts. Powerful.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 4 months ago (11 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (20 children)

nano was and still is vital to me learning and using linux, I will not learn how to use vim so if the distro forces it to be default im not using it.

Why is editing text so convoluted for seemingly no reason.. also hate that vim must be used for certain files.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I used nano when I started but now I am using vim for one year already. I'd recommend taking a few days where you only use vim and I think you will see why people like it. With a few motions you can be much faster than you would be in Nano.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

One of the big reasons I switched to nixos is that I mostly need to use the console only for updating my system by editing the configuration file using nano. I do very little besides that thankfully while the GUI side of linux gets better everyday.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

vim must be used for certain files??

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Cant remember exactly but it had something to do with a file relating to sudo and it only was allowed to be edited with a vim style editor.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

There may be certain times where it's all that's available, I think I remember having to edit fstab in some recovery state in vi

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (9 children)

It's for people to memorize hundreds of arcane shortcuts and shit so they can feel like a smug hacker and gloat over the rest of us using other editors and getting just as much done as they are.

Also for graybeards that haven't realized it's not 1985 anymore.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

Wait until you meet an emacs user! ;p

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, to this day vim still isn't intuitive for me, so I just use nano as it's either often included or simple to install on most Distros.

Unless a script is hardcoded for vim I haven't had to use it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I abused debfoster for years... it kept my machines running very, very clean.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Idk a lot of commands but I think wget for downloading webpages and rsync for syncing devices are pretty awesome

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

The first time I used wget I felt so awesome. I was grabbing some extra music files I think it was for Ur-Quan Masters.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

Use less for checking contents of files. Many people use cat all the time, but I don't like it, because if you do that often, your terminal window quickly gets flooded with stuff, and then you have to scroll up and down if you wanna see a previous output. With less, your file opens in a different "frame", which you can close when you're done.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Useless use of cat award!

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

Yes! I use less all the time, combine it with grep, etc.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Inshellisense is teaching me a lot. :) It's an autocompleter.

https://github.com/microsoft/inshellisense

Also, Atuin for history.

https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

CTRL-L to clear your terminal output. Or type clear

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I like https://github.com/aristocratos/btop personally. It's way prettier than the normal top command which you use to watch processes to find the one that's hogging all of the CPU or whatever. And it's not so much that it's underrated so much as it's not very well known or distributed by default.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Do you have to wear the fedora to run this command?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Great call! pv is deceptively powerful. Being able to see progress and rate limit a pipe is incredibly useful.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

ia: internetarchive https://archive.org/developers/internetarchive/cli.html cli tool, i only use it for downloads, it can a bit more than the eye meets first, like accepting a wildcard to download certain files or specify other stuff. I have an incomplete script to help me with that, which I want to share in the future. The only problem is, that the internetarchive at archive.org is often very slow at downloading.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (3 children)

dd is probably well known, but one of the simplest and most powerful ways to accidentally delete all data on your hard drive. dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

@bamboo @mfat , DD, great tool. Utilize it so often, but it is powerful and dangerous. I always double, triple, quadruple check my target disks with multiple programs to avoid destroying my production workstation. Might be best if I just designated a RPi for the job. 😅

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