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.

  • HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    Most listed in some form elsewhere, but

    • Ugrep
    • ranger/lf
    • tmux (splitting terminal and detatching/reattaching when I’m sshing onto server, etc)

    I’ve also been enjoying Kate. It’s a decent text editor, but the ability to Ctrl + / to pipe selected lines through any Linux command (Uniq, shuf, etc) is a bit of a superpower for an editor

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m a big fan of screen because it will let me run long-running processes without having to stay connected via SSH, and will log all the output.

    I do a lot of work on customers’ servers and having a full record of everything that happened is incredibly valuable for CYA purposes.

    • Static_Rocket@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I’d recommend tmux for that particular use. Screen has a lot of extras that are interesting but don’t really follow the GNU mentality of “do one thing and do it well.”

    • HotChickenFeet@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months 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.

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
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    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

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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
    
  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    vd (VisiData) is a wonderful TUI spreadsheet program. It can read lots of formats, like csv, sqlite, and even nested formats like json. It supports Python expressions and replayable commands.

    I find it most useful for large CSV files from various sources. Logs and reports from a lot of the tools I use can easily be tens of thousands of rows, and it can take many minutes just to open them in GUI apps like Excel or LibreOffice.

    I frequently need to re-export fresh data, so I find myself needing to re-process and re-arrange it every time, which visidata makes easy (well, easier) with its replayable command files. So e.g. I can write a script to open a raw csv, add a formula column, resize all columns to fit their content, set the column types as appropriate, and sort it the way I need it. So I can do direct from exporting the data to reading it with no preprocessing in between.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    socat - connect anything to anything

    for example

    socat - tcp-connect:remote-server:12345

    socat tcp-listen:12345 -

    socat tcp-listen:12345 tcp-connect:remote-server:12345