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Modern Linux tools

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Re: Modern Linux tools

#61

Post by maeln »

fergie wrote: post #14

I basically live in the terminal. However, every single one of these tools offers a solution to a problem that I don't have; aren't installed on my system; and mysteriously have many tens of thousands of github stars. I genuinely don't know what is going on here.

> I basically live in the terminal. However, every single one of these tools offers a solution to a problem that I don't have; aren't installed on my system; and mysteriously have many tens of thousands of github stars.

> I genuinely don't know what is going on here.

I basically live in my music library. However, every single pop artist offers songs that I don't like, are not in my library, and mysteriously have many millions of albums sold.

I genuinely don't know what is going on here.

Joking aside, have you ever tried to use some of these tools ? I use to not understand why people where using vim until I really tried.

Re: Modern Linux tools

#62

Post by maeln »

Izkata wrote: post #60
maeln wrote: post #53

Every time such a list is posted, it tends to generate a lot of debate, but I do think there is at least 2 tools that are really a good addition to any terminal : `fd`: first I find that the argument semantic is way better than `find`, but that is more a bonus than a real killer feature. Now, it being much, much faster than `find` on most setup, I would consider a valuable feature. But the killer feature for me is th…

> But the killer feature for me is the `-x` argument. It allows calling another command on the individual search result, which `find` can also do with `xargs` and co. But `fd` provide a very nice placeholder syntax[0], which remove the need to mess with `basename` and co. to parse the filename and make a new one, and it executes in parallel. For example, it makes converting a batch of image a fast and readable one li…

`find` only support `{}`, it does not support `{/}`, `{//}`, `{.}` etc, which is why you often need to do some parsing magic to replicate basic thing such has "the full path without the extension`, `only the filename without the extension` etc

Re: Modern Linux tools

#63

Post by demetris »

drob518 wrote: post #36
bieganski wrote: post #3

i wish there was an additional column in the table, that says "what problem does it solve". oh, and 'it's written in rust' does not count.

“It’s written in Rust” Actual LOL. Indeed. I was working for a large corporation at one point and a development team was explaining their product. I asked what its differentiators were versus our competitors. The team replied that ours was written in Go. #faceplam

The Rust rewrites can become tiresome, they have become a meme at this point, but there are really good tools there too.

An example from my personal experience: I used to think that oxipng was just a faster optipng. I took a closer look recently and saw that it is more than that.

See: https://op111.net/posts/2025/09/png-compression-oxipng-optip...

Re: Modern Linux tools

#64

Post by dbacar »

tmountain wrote: post #54
0x37 wrote: post #9

These may be objectively superior (I haven't tested), but I have come to realize (like so many others) that if you ever change your OS installation, set up VMs, or SSH anywhere, preferring these is just an uphill battle that never ends. I don't want to have to set these up in every new environment I operate in, or even use a mix of these on my personal computer and the traditional ones elsewhere. Learn the classic to…

Some are so vastly better that it's worth whatever small inconvenience comes with getting them installed. I know the classic tools very well, but I'll prefer fd and ripgrep every time.

+100

Re: Modern Linux tools

#65

Post by robenkleene »

fergie wrote: post #14

I basically live in the terminal. However, every single one of these tools offers a solution to a problem that I don't have; aren't installed on my system; and mysteriously have many tens of thousands of github stars. I genuinely don't know what is going on here.

Out of curiosity, how would you recursively grep files ignoring (hidden files [e.g., `.git`]), only matching a certain file extension? (E.g., `rg -g '*.foo' bar`.)

I use the command line a lot too and this is one of my most common commands, and I don't know of an elegant way to do it with the builtin Unix tools.

(And I have basically the same question for finding files matching a regex or glob [ignoring the stuff I obviously don't want], e.g., `fd '.foo.*'`.)

Re: Modern Linux tools

#67

Post by fergie »

robenkleene wrote: post #65
fergie wrote: post #14

I basically live in the terminal. However, every single one of these tools offers a solution to a problem that I don't have; aren't installed on my system; and mysteriously have many tens of thousands of github stars. I genuinely don't know what is going on here.

Out of curiosity, how would you recursively grep files ignoring (hidden files [e.g., `.git`]), only matching a certain file extension? (E.g., `rg -g '*.foo' bar`.) I use the command line a lot too and this is one of my most common commands, and I don't know of an elegant way to do it with the builtin Unix tools. (And I have basically the same question for finding files matching a regex or glob [ignoring the stuff I o…

grep -ri foo ./*

Hits in hidden files is not really a pain point for me

Re: Modern Linux tools

#68

Post by sigio »

As someone who logs into hundreds of servers in various networks, from various customers/clients, there is so little value in using custom tooling, as they will not be available on 90% of the systems.

I have a very limited set of additional tools I tend to install on systems, and they are in my default ansible-config, so will end up on systems quickly, but I try to keep this list short and sweet.

95% of the systems I manage are debian or ubuntu, so they will use mostly the same baseline, and I then add stuff like ack, etckeeper, vim, pv, dstat.

Re: Modern Linux tools

#69

Post by oslem »

I always enjoy these lists. I think most folks out there could probably successfully adopt at least one or two of these tools. For me, that’s ripgrep and jq. The former is a great drop-in replacement for grep and the latter solves a problem I needed solving. I’ll try out a few of the others on this list, too. lsd and dust both appeal to me.

I just enjoy seeing others incrementally improve on our collective tool chest. Even if the new tool isn’t of use to me, I appreciate the work that went into it. They’re wonderful tools in their own right. Often adding a few modern touches to make a great tool just a little bit better.

Thank you to those who have put in so much effort. You’re making the community objectively better.

Re: Modern Linux tools

#70

Post by [deleted] »

Izkata wrote: post #60
maeln wrote: post #53

Every time such a list is posted, it tends to generate a lot of debate, but I do think there is at least 2 tools that are really a good addition to any terminal : `fd`: first I find that the argument semantic is way better than `find`, but that is more a bonus than a real killer feature. Now, it being much, much faster than `find` on most setup, I would consider a valuable feature. But the killer feature for me is th…

> But the killer feature for me is the `-x` argument. It allows calling another command on the individual search result, which `find` can also do with `xargs` and co. But `fd` provide a very nice placeholder syntax[0], which remove the need to mess with `basename` and co. to parse the filename and make a new one, and it executes in parallel. For example, it makes converting a batch of image a fast and readable one li…

[deleted]
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