12 GREAT command line programs YOU recommended!

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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:58 Sponsor: Proton Mail
02:23 Package manager for CLI apps
03:18 Find files easily
04:23 Better terminal history
05:24 Save your dotfiles
06:50 Tweak your battery life
08:26 Analyze disk space usage
09:24 Reboot on a specific OS
10:08 Better system monitor
10:53 Better CAT
11:28 Quick CLI help
12:09 Tiling WM for your terminal
13:15 More legible file list
13:55 Recommend yours!
14:18 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers
15:19 Support the channel

#Linux #terminal #commandline #linuxcommunity #linuxcommands #linuxcommands

So, our first recommendation will be homebrew, it's sort of a pre-requisite to get a lot of command line utilities that your distro might not have packaged.

You can install homebrew with one command line, and then you can get any CLI utility you want by running brew install, followed by the name of the tool you need.

Our second pick is FZF, for Fuzzy Find. It lets you search files extremely fast using their names, but it can also look through command history, processes, bookmarks, git commits, and more.

ATUIN thing replaces your shell history with a database you can search through super easily. Once it's installed with brew, press the up arrow key or control +r, and you'll get a search interface to look for all your commands.

CHEZMOI lets you manage your dotfiles. It lets you share these config files across devices by syncing them to a got repo, and it can interface with a very large variety of password managers to keep everything safe.

If you use a laptop, and you find Linux's batter life to be a bit subpar, maybe look at POWERTOP.
Just run the command powertop, and you'll see all processes. Using tab, you can navigate to various statistics, but also to the "tunables" screen, which will show you what powertop identifies as a bad configuration for battery life.

If you'd like to tune these, you can rune powertop --auto-tune, and it will change all the settings to what it believes are "good" options for battery life saving, although it might impact the performance.

If you'd like to quickly analyze what uses a lot of disk space on your computer, or on a remote server, you might want to replace the du and df commands with DUST.

If you run a dual boot, and you're facing problems with accessing one of your installed systems, you can force GRUB to reboot into a specific system, just for the next boot, using the grub-reboot command, followed by the number of the grub entry for that system.

If you need to monitor for resource usage on your computer, you might be using top, or htop, but BTOP is a better option. It looks better than htop or top, and it's also more legible.

If you often use the cat command to read a file, maybe try BAT instead. It does the same thing, but it also has syntax highlighting for a bunch of files, and it communicates with git to show modifications in files, with the usual Plus and minuses symbols.

If man is too much for you and is too much reading, and if the --help option isn't enough, why not try TLDR? It gives you an abridged version of the contents of MAN for most of the available programs and commands, and it makes things more legible, and easier to parse at a glance.

If you like to split a terminal or a tty into multiple terminals, ZELLIJ is a nice alternative to things like tmux. It's basically a tiling window manager for your terminal workspace: you can define your own layout, it supports plugins, floating panes, and more.

You can run it by running the zellij command, and then you can create a new pane pressing alt + N, you can move a pane using control +h, or make it floating with Control + P, then W.

If you often use ls to list files in a directory, you might want to take a look at EZA. It does the same job, as in, it lists the contents of a directory, but it does it with way more details, and a more legible interface.

[defekT]

Just started to watch this and I already want to Say: Yes please more of this. Community recommendations are always the best because it's real life experience and no advertising.

[foji-video]

only use brew if you dont find the package in your repo.
Brew can break dependencies, or install non-functional stuff because of different versions. Your own distro package manager has the right versions

[sbrl]

tldr-pages maintainer here. Thanks for featuring us! ✨
(psst, we're always looking for more contributors :P)

[legitt]

If you're using an Arch-based distro, you can find all of the mentioned programs in the regular (not AUR) repos (also, no need for Homebrew :))

[nmetal]

zellij is an arabic word which actually means the style of mosaic tilework made from individual tiles, its very common to be on walls, floors,and ceilings as decorations in homes, especially in my hometown Morocco, so it's definitely a good name choice

[Alex-ceol]

FYI, you don't need Atuin to search your bash history. Just press CTRL+R and start typing, then press CTRL+R again as needed to cycle through the matches.

[bennyprfane]

Please definitely make more of these "best tools for x"-style recommendation videos, I always find super helpful stuff when you recommend things!

[ShiziKroc]

I recommend NCDU, it's more interactible for space usage analysis

[barbiefan]

always prefer installing packages via your distro's package manager, if the package is there

[ivanmaglica]

mc - Midnight Commander - modern Norton Commander replacement. I cant live without it, saves literally hours a week

[PanduPoluan]

Ahh I see that CLI tools I use have been mentioned: btop, eza, bat ... What's not mentioned:
- rg (ripgrep = faster grep alternative)
- fd (faster file finder)
- ncdu (an alternative to dust)
- iftop (network traffic monitoring)
- zsh + oh-my-zsh

[collinslagat]

Zoxide as a replacement or complement for *cd* command.

[thedoofguy]

Midnight Commander. It's hands down the best file manager for terminals. Flexible, powerful, and always there when you need it.

[taylorhardy]

You can press control-r to reverse search your bash history in vanilla bash and if you press control-r again it will go to the next result

[Goose.wox.]

8:26 i personally use ncdu because i find it more easy to read and navigate

[halfsourlizard]

Why on earth would you use brew unless you're stuck using a Mac?!?

[bubbles]

Obviously tetris for terminals (tt) is the only command line app we need.

[oalfodr]

I loved the format of this video. I knew about all of the mentioned programs (apart from shell history search one that is not even appealing to me since fzf does that already), but I welcome the opportunity to find about new tools in some of the next episodes. Some of my favorite tools are: nvim, rsync, lf - file manager, jq - JSON procesor, ffmpeg, imagemagick, neomutt, awk...

[jaumesinglavalls]

One tool, I use a lot is call thefuck, I think I didn't get time to see the form to add it, (and pretty sure it won't be in this video if it had) thefuck is a command that allows you rectify your last command, if you ever writed bim when you wished to write vim, run fuck, and he will propose you the correct command. (Not allways works, but in general I love it and use it every day)

[Eagledelta]

Just as a heads up - FZF is available in most, if not all, distros. So you can just install it from there. Also, like atuin, FZF can search your command history with CTRL+R.