this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Which Linux tool or command is surprisingly simple, powerful, and yet underrated?" (lemmy.ml)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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] 91 points 4 days ago (6 children)

A few that I use every day:

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago

Just commenting to give more love to helix. It's my favorite "small quick edits" editor.

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

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.

[–] Feyd 10 points 4 days ago

One thing that holds people back sometimes is that bash scripts that set environment variables don't work by default. https://github.com/edc/bass is an easy solution

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

Helix is great thanks

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Once Helix gets plugin support and someone makes a Clojure REPL plugin as good as Conjure I am never touching vim again!

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

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Could you explain them in more depth? I opened them and don’t know

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

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.)

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

Thank you for explaining. I would never have understood topgrade without your example :)

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

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.

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

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.
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This is sick!! Would you mind sharing your config?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Thanks for adding this. What does stashed mean

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 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.

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

Thanks!