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.

  • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
    86·
    2 months ago

    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

    • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      28·
      2 months ago

      Also works on Twitch with the added benefit of NOT playing ads (you still get breaks, just with a placeholder screen instead of the commercial).

      mpv has yt-dlp support built in, so it can just play the streams directly.

    • gnuhaut@lemmy.ml
      12·
      2 months ago

      Since everyone keeps mentioning yt-dlp I gotta ask: what’s wrong with the original youtube-dl? I keep using it, it works, it’s still being updated.

    • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
      22·
      2 months ago

      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

    • Trent@lemmy.mlEnglish
      14·
      2 months ago

      Just commenting to give more love to helix. It’s my favorite “small quick edits” editor.

      • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
        5·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
          8·
          2 months ago

          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.
            • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
              7·
              2 months 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.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 months ago

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

        • SFloss (they/them)@lemmy.ml
          2·
          2 months 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.

    • HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      1 month ago

      Do you have experience with either ranger, lf, or yazi? I’m wondering how broot compares. Big fan of file ranger, and this looks very similar.

    • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
      15·
      2 months ago

      I use it occasionally but every time I need to do something a tiny bit more complex than “extract field from an object” I have to spend half an hour studying its manual, at which point it’s faster to just write a Python script doing exactly what I need it to do.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        Came here to say both of these things. (Awk and “> simple”.)

        To be totally honest, I don’t think awk is any more complicated than something like grep, it’s just that regular expressions get used more often so they’re typically more familiar. In the same way that programming languages with c-like syntax (like Java and C#) often feel easier than ones that don’t (like Haskell and Clojure).

  • jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip
    312·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
      154·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I’ve used Vim for some pretty non-nerdy stuff. Like ripping my DVD collection, when I got to the TV section I had a lot of file names to modify in bulk, and Vim let me do that. Also guitar tablature, the ability to edit plaintext both horizontally and vertically is surprisingly handy. Just having a macro to be able to add a bar line saves a shocking amount of time.

      • zagaberoo@beehaw.org
        1·
        2 months ago

        Wow, who hurt you? Vim is fun, and just because you can make things work without it doesn’t mean it has no practical benefit. It’s nice to have an editor as powerful as an IDE that doesn’t require a graphical environment.

        Hundreds of shortcuts is emacs, by the way. A major perk of modal editing and the vi editing language is that you can compose relatively few operations to accomplish many tasks rather than memorizing lots of more complex and specific shortcuts.

    • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
      7·
      2 months ago

      Wow you triggered a lot of vim users !

      Maybe give micro a shot :) It’s nano but more sane defaults and comes with customization in mind.

    • jayandp@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      2 months ago

      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.

    • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
      4·
      2 months ago

      vim isn’t required for any files, you just followed online tutorials for how to edit those files instead of RTFM

      terminal text editing is convoluted because it has to strike a balance between figuring out when a keypress is part of the text you’re typing, vs when it’s a command you’re using, and making sure that all the editor commands the designer wanted are accessible.

      vim is great because it allows for thousands more editing commands and macros, and much more customization of the editor, up to allowing plugins that emulate other functionality. As it stands, my setup basically functions as a full, lightweight-ish, multi-language IDE that rivals Emacs or Visual Studio.

      On top of all that, I don’t have to move my hands away from the homerow of keys to navigate or edit, which may not seem like much, but adds up to a lot of avoid typos and time saved from moving my hands to reach the arrows/delete/home/end/pgup/pgdn.

      Some examples:

      h, j,k,l move left, down, up, and right respectively, but they can be combined with a number to move that many rows or columns; e.g. 6j will move down 6 rows

      dd deletes a line, but using a number + d + a movement will delete that many characters/lines in the path of the cursor: e.g. 34dl will delete 34 characters to the right of the cursor, 12dk will delete 12 lines up.

      gg will take you to the first line, G will take you to the last, and number + either will take you to that line: e.g. 3275gg or 3275G will take you to line 3275

      and finally you can use /text or regex pattern you want to search for and Enter to search the document for the first occurence below your current location, and then use n to search for the next occurence, or N to search for the previous

      That doesn’t even scratch the surface (that’s just the cheatsheet, which only scratches the surface), but if you can get a handle on only what I’ve said, and switching between input and command mode (i and Esc respectively), the speedup to navigation alone will make it seem more sensible.

      And as always, don’t forget to :wq (write to file and quit)

      • jaxiiruff@lemmy.zip
        31·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • hersh@literature.cafe
          7·
          2 months ago

          There’s a separate command called visudo for this purpose.

          You CAN use any ol’ text editor but visudo has built-in validation specific to the sudoers file. This is helpful because sudoers syntax is unique and arcane, and errors are potentially quite harmful.

          • azuth@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            10·
            2 months ago

            But visudo can use any editor if you set SUDO_EDITOR or EDITOR variables. If you don’t want to use vi(m) you should probably set EDITOR in your .bashrc and visudo and probably other programs will use your editor of choice.

        • JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          2 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

        • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          2 months ago

          /etc/sudoers?

          you can just edit that with nano or whatever, the visudo thing they tell you to use is goofy and I don’t like it

        • johant@lemmy.ml
          1·
          2 months ago

          The EDITOR or VISUAL environment variables are usually read by command line tools to launch your preferred editor. You could set VISUAL to nano before launching visudo and you would be editing the sudoers file in nano.

    • Knuschberkeks@leminal.space
      3·
      2 months ago

      seems like you need to try micro. It’s like nano, but with more sensible standard keybinds imho, as well as syntax highlighting and global clipboard use.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
      2·
      2 months ago

      Nano is hella confusing too. Since when is ^ = Ctrl?

      And why dont they tell you that Ctrl+S Ctrl+C Ctrl+X works?

      • BaumGeist@lemmy.ml
        3·
        2 months ago

        Since 1968

        As for why: arbitrary choice, they just needed a printable character they could show on screen, for when people pressed it and the terminal echoed it back out to them.

        • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
          2·
          2 months ago

          Yes but I am not that old and never saw it anywhere. So while it makes as much sense as hjkl it is not beginner friendly.

  • wasabi@lemmy.eco.br
    26·
    2 months ago

    I find myself using tldr a lot since finding out about it. It’s just so useful for commands that I don’t use enough to commit to memory.

  • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
    24·
    2 months ago

    I know tmux is incredibly popular, but a good use case for it that isn’t common is teaching people how to do things in the terminal. You can both be attached to the same tmux session, and both type into the same shell.

    • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Tmux is so much better than screen, and yes that is the hill I will die on

      Specially when confined with tmuxp , it’s how I handle Game servers that can run headless to start at boot without losing access to giving commands to the server via its server console

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
    24·
    2 months ago

    zoxide. It’s a fabulous cd replacement. It builds a database as you navigate your filesystem. Once you’ve navigated to a directory, instead of having to type cd /super/long/directory/path, you can type zoxide path and it’ll take you right to /super/long/directory/path.

    I have it aliased to zd. I love it and install it on every system

    You can do things like using a partial directory name and it’ll jump you to the closest match in the database. So zoxide pa would take you to /super/long/directory/path.

    And you can do partial paths. Say you’ve got two directories named data in your filesystem.

    One at /super/long/directory/path1/data

    And the other at /super/long/directory/path2/data

    You can do zoxide path2 data and you’ll go to /super/long/directory/path2/data

    • communism@lemmy.ml
      3·
      2 months ago

      Very useful for shell scripts that need to do maths as well. I use it to make percentages when stdout has values between 0.0 and 1.0

      • gens@programming.dev
        1·
        2 months ago

        I once wrote a bc script that calculated parameters for the Blackman window for a FIR filter. (Had formulas already so not that impressive) Upped the precision until it needed like 30 sec to calculate, completely unnecessarely :).

  • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    19·
    2 months ago

    yq is crazy cool for converting between different text-based data formats such as yaml, json, xml, csv and others, and it has a super nice pretty-printing function as well. I use it all the time!

    Just be aware that your distroy might come with a yq variant too, but possibly one that isn’t as powerful as the one I linked. I know this to be true at least for Ubuntu.

  • Serge Matveenko@lemmings.worldEnglish
    19·
    2 months ago

    I don’t see anyone mentions htop. So, I will:) Just works, could be installed in any distro. Much more friendly than top but isn’t bloated with features as some other alternatives are.