this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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    Just installed mint yesterday, I get it now (lemmy.world)
    submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
    139 comments fedilink hide all child comments
     

    I thought it'd be a pain but installing programs through the terminal is actually so nice, I never would have expected it

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    [–] [email protected] 96 points 1 day ago (8 children)
    • tab completion works in more places than you might expect
    • ctrl-a/ctrl-e for start/end of line
    • ctrl-u to clear the command you’ve typed so far but store it into a temporary pastebuffer
    • ctrl-y to paste the ctrl-u’d command
    • ctrl-w to delete by word (I prefer binding to alt-backspace though)
    • ctrl-r to search your command history
    • alt-b/alt-f to move cursor back/forwards by word
    • !! is shorthand for the previous run command; handy for sudo !!
    • !$ is the last argument of the previous command; useful more often than you’d think
    • which foo tells you where the foo program is located
    • ls -la
    • cd without any args takes you to your home dir
    • cd - takes you to your previous dir
    • ~ is a shorthand for your home dir
    [–] [email protected] 1 points 38 minutes ago

    What's the shortcut for scrolling the terminal?

    [–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

    Saved! Thank you so much.

    I've used Linux full-time since late 2020 and I never knew about ctrl+y and ctrl+u.

    I'd also like to contribute some knowledge.

    aliases

    You can put these into your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc or whatever shell you use.

    ###
### ls aliases
###
# ls = colors
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

# ll = ls + human readable file sizes
alias ll='ls -lh --color=auto'

# lla = ll + show hidden files and folders
alias lla='ls -lah --color=auto'

###
### other aliases
###
# set color for different commands
alias diff='diff --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias ip='ip --color=auto'

# my favourite way of navigating to a far-off folder
# this scans my home folder and presents me with a list of
#    fuzzy-searchable folders
#    you need fzf and fd installed for this alias to work
alias cdd='cd "$(sudo fd -t d . ${HOME} | fzf)"'

    recommendations

    ncdu - a shell-based tool to analyze disk usage, think GNOME's baobab or KDE's filelight but in the terminal

    zellij - tmux but easy and with nice colors

    atuin - shell history but good, fuzzy-searchable. If you still have the basic shell history (when pressing ctrl+r), I cannot recommend this enough.

    ranger - a terminal file-browser (does everything I need and way more)

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago

    Saving this! Absolutely gold, thanks for writing it up. You're what makes the Linux community cool. ❤️

    tab completion works in more places than you might expect

    I've found tab to be such a nice "please give me a hint" button.

    • Bonus tip : Sometimes you won't get auto complete because there's too many possibilities and the computer can't be certain which one you want. Hitting tab multiple times will show the possibilities, so you can type in enough characters to remove ambiguity, hit tab again, and boom auto complete!

    ...That was a terribly convoluted explanation I'm sorry. Just try hitting tab multiple times for fun if you're stuck it's kinda handy. Lol

    [–] [email protected] 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

    If you’re looking for a full list of these kind of navigation shortcuts, they all come from readline so read the man page for that. Or just look up the basic navigation of emacs which is what readline is mimicking.

    [–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

    A neat thing is that a lot of command line programs use readline. So learning and configuring it will also be useful in for example the Python REPL and calc.

    Here are some neat configuration options you can put in ~/.inputrc

    set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
set completion-prefix-display-length 9
set blink-matching-paren on
set mark-symlinked-directories on

    And if you are a sensible person who is used to vim

    set editing-mode vi
set show-mode-in-prompt on
    [–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

    I've been using the commandline for so long but was always too lazy to look up the rest of these commands after ctrl+a/e and ctrl+r THANK YOU!!!

    post this commend again and again! There's always lazy idiots like me who will be helped that way!

    [–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago
    • alt-. also pastes the last argument of the previous command (useful if you need to modify it a bit)
    • instead of any shortcuts starting with "alt" you can also press "esc" followed by the second key, e.g. pressing "esc", releasing it and then "a" is the same as pressing "alt-a" (useful if you have only one hand available, or if alt is not availalble)
    • if you put a space before a command, it will not be saved in history (useful sometimes, e.g. if you pass a password directly as an argument)
    [–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

    Makes me realize just how illogical and bad these shortcuts are

    [–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    I believe, these are Emacs shortcuts. There's also set -o vi in bash, but I've never used it, so can't vouch for it.

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

    That’s good to know. It’s interesting that the other commenter thinks emacs shortcuts are illogical. I’ll make my best guesses at the logic

    • ctrl-a/ctrl-e for start/end of line

    a is the beginning of the alphabet; e for end (of line)

    • ctrl-u to clear the command you’ve typed so far but store it into a temporary pastebuffer
    • ctrl-y to paste the ctrl-u’d command

    No idea here. Seems similar to nano with k-“cut” and u-”uncut”.

    • ctrl-w to delete by word

    w for word obviously.

    • ctrl-r to search your command history
    • alt-b/alt-f to move cursor back/forwards by word

    r reverse, b back, f forward. Not sure why alt vs control though; presumably ctrl+b and ctrl+f do different things although I know emacs likes to use Alt (“Meta”) a lot.

    [–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago

    In the 1980s, Digital Equipment Corporation had a word processor, WPS. Ctrl-u cleared the line you were typing and put it into the paste buffer. Maybe legacy usage?

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

    Explains why they are so illogical! Unfortunately i think its better to just learn the defaults since i remote into lots of servers where i dont carry my config

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

    Nice list, TIL about Ctrl+U and Ctrl+Y.

    If I may add, Ctrl+X into Ctrl+E opens $EDITOR to edit the current line.