Linux

48904 readers

948 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

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

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

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

357

Which Linux tool or command is surprisingly simple, powerful, and yet underrated?" (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

339 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

            
              awk
the (usually rust-based) coreutils "alternatives" like bat, fd, eza, procs
trash-put (rm with trash integration. But beware that it also operates on directories by default, which rm only does with -r. There should be an option to change that behavior but there isn't. Don't alias rm to this)
wl-copy/paste (or the older one for X11, 'xclip' IIRC. Enables you to do stuff like "cat image.jpg | wl-copy" to copy it to the clipboard. Best alias it to something shorter)
xdg-open (open the file using your associated program for that file type. Alias to "o" or so)
pass (awesome password manager, when you have a GPG key pair. Even better in combination with e.g. wofi)
notify-send (to send GUI notifications from shell scripts)
ledger (plain-text accounting software. If you use Emacs you should take a look at this as it's written by an Emacs dev, and has good integration of course)
nc
nohup


            
          