this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Linux

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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.

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

tmsu is pretty cool - it creates a little db and uses that to track tags on your files without ever touching them. It also has it's own little tag based filesystem.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Underrated or not widely known?

I love lazygit and I'm still surprised at how many people are shocked when they see it for the first time. Not exactly a command, but a very handy text UI tool.

For more elementary tools, I can't believe how many people know about ! and ctrl+r who don't also know about fc and edit-and-execute-command.

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[–] hperrin 7 points 1 month ago (5 children)

degit is a tool that will check out a git repo (or a specific branch or commit), but not set it up as a git repo. Basically just downloading a specific commit to a directory.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Bat, a cat alternative.

Lsd, an ls alternative.

Procs, a ps alternative.

Renane, because it's great.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

all of them

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Idk a lot of commands but I think wget for downloading webpages and rsync for syncing devices are pretty awesome

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

motion

After spending years dealing with shady freeware and junk software on windows, I was floored by how easy and nonchalantly I was able to set up a simple security camera on my PC

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

People always sleep on script. It's badass and let's you do goofy things like this while keeping standard terminal formatting: https://github.com/StaticRocket/dotfiles/blob/043e9a56cc9515060188ec4642e4048c0dd6c000/dot_bashrc#L79-L94

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

Lightweight sudo alternatives, hard to google too. I know ssu and rdo, please mention others.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Inshellisense is teaching me a lot. :) It's an autocompleter.

https://github.com/microsoft/inshellisense

Also, Atuin for history.

https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

+1 to caddy. There are some services that set safe headers following the recommendations outlined by Mozilla but others don't control headers as strictly. Caddy is the only web server that I found that supports loose default header values. These values will be selected unless the upstream application specifies their own values.

You can do something similar in nginx but it requires playing with maps and has a little more indirection than I'd like.

Just wish caddy was capable of starting as root and stepping down permissions like Nginx. I have certs being managed by other tools and have to make sure they are installed and chowned for caddy's use when they are cycled.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (9 children)

As someone who has to do installs and admin at work a lot I'm constantly dealing with yum/dnf. I cry when I have to work with AIX.

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