Less Commonly Used Unix Commands • Hacker News Board

Re: Less Commonly Used Unix Commands

#91

Post by alextingle » Tue, Feb 18, 2014, 12:40 PM UTC

nknighthb wrote: post #79

banachtarski wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty on this list are well known... My thoughts exactly. Time, df, du, iostat, watch, htop, wget, tmux, .... Really?

Most people know only the bare minimum to move files around. Not everyone has spent their life on a nix command line. And I don't even know why you'd think iostat, watch, htop, or tmux would be well-known amongst anyone other than sysadmins and long-time nix power users. And tmux didn't even exist five years ago.

'watch' is so awesomely useful. Everyone should know it.

Re: Less Commonly Used Unix Commands

#92

Post by coherentpony » Tue, Feb 18, 2014, 7:35 PM UTC

brokenparser wrote: post #86

coherentpony wrote: post #78

I was really enjoying the fact you had a tl;dr next to each one. Then I noticed this wget: get w’s Ok, if I didn't know what wget did already that wasn't too useful. But then it gets worse vim: attack yourself man units: interesting ddate: wtf

watch: execute something on a schedule *in realtime* printf: change the format of output apropos: info on commands dd: disk writing ss: socket statistics (show apps *using the Internet*) Almost but not quite.

Right, that's what I'm saying. That's enough information for me to decide whether I need to google further if it's something I need to install myself (or use man if it's installed out of the box). The examples I gave don't give me that first bit of information.

Re: Less Commonly Used Unix Commands

#93

Post by brokenparser » Wed, Feb 19, 2014, 7:22 AM UTC

coherentpony wrote: post #92

brokenparser wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

watch: execute something on a schedule *in realtime* printf: change the format of output apropos: info on commands dd: disk writing ss: socket statistics (show apps *using the Internet*) Almost but not quite.

Right, that's what I'm saying. That's enough information for me to decide whether I need to google further if it's something I need to install myself (or use man if it's installed out of the box). The examples I gave don't give me that first bit of information.

No need for Google, just use man.

Re: Less Commonly Used Unix Commands

#94

Post by coherentpony » Wed, Feb 19, 2014, 7:02 PM UTC

brokenparser wrote: post #93

coherentpony wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that's what I'm saying. That's enough information for me to decide whether I need to google further if it's something I need to install myself (or use man if it's installed out of the box). The examples I gave don't give me that first bit of information.

No need for Google, just use man.

If it's installed, yes. If it's not installed, no:

    $ man ddate
    No manual entry for ddate

Re: Less Commonly Used Unix Commands

#95

Post by banachtarski » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 6:46 AM UTC

nknighthb wrote: post #79

banachtarski wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty on this list are well known... My thoughts exactly. Time, df, du, iostat, watch, htop, wget, tmux, .... Really?

Most people know only the bare minimum to move files around. Not everyone has spent their life on a nix command line. And I don't even know why you'd think iostat, watch, htop, or tmux would be well-known amongst anyone other than sysadmins and long-time nix power users. And tmux didn't even exist five years ago.

Fair enough. 5 years is a long time in the tech world to me. Tons of things change in that time. I'm not a sysadmin, and I'm not against educating people about these tools. I'm also not saying the exact inverse of the original statement (that everybody knows these). What I am saying is that it's a stretch to say they aren't well known. Call it "intermediate linux usage" or something.