Nothing screams modern Linux more than having an unmaintained replacement for ls.
Modern Linux tools
211–219 of 219 posts
Re: Modern Linux tools
#212These 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…
I indeed would not want to feel stranded with a bespoke toolkit. But I also don't think shying away from good tools is the answer. Generally I think using better tools is the way to go. Often there are plenty of of paths open to getting a decent environment as you go: Mostly, I rely on ansible scripts to install and configure the tools I use. One fallback I haven't seen mentioned, that can get a lot of mileage from i…
Emacs/Tramp does that for me.
Re: Modern Linux tools
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also that workflow of SSH'ing into a machine is becoming rarer. Nowadays systems are so barren they don't even have SSH.
Someone might have ssh access, just not you :) VPS' will still be VPSing, even though people tend to go for managed Kubernetes or whatever the kids are doing today. But if you're renting instances/"machines", then you're most likely still using ssh.
Ansible (system management automation) runs over SSH. So do a lot of other useful tools, like git, rsync, most everything from the "CharmBracelet" folks [1], and also anything you can port tunnel, so yeah. SSH is still useful to some of us out here. Personally, I do all my commandline stuff locally and manage remote stuff via SSH through various tools and scripting, so I get mostly the best of both worlds there. :)
Re: Modern Linux tools
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You'll need install those and other tools (your favorite browser, you favorite text editor, etc) anyway if you're changing your OS. The point is that sometimes you're SSHing to a lightweight headless server or something and you can't (or can't easily) install software.
Because 'sometimes' doesn't mean you should needlessly handcuf yourself the other 80% of the time. I personally haves an ansible playbook to ~setup all my commonly used tooling on ~any cli I will use significantly; (almost) all local installs to avoid need for root. It runs in ~minute - and I have all the Niceties. If it's not worth spending that minute to run; then i won't be on the machine long enough for it to mat…
> I personally haves an ansible playbook to ~setup all my commonly used tooling on ~any cli I will use significantly;
^^ Yep. Totally this. I've become entirely too accustomed to all the little niceties of a well-crafted toolchain that covers all my needs at any given moment. It was worth the time invested to automate installing and configuring all the fancy newfangled stuff I've built up muscle-memory for. :)
Re: Modern Linux tools
#215I kinda wish there was a modern *suite* of improved tools, developed by one team with consistent designs (parameters, colors, tables, etc.)
Nushell.
Re: Modern Linux tools
#216While folks were building improved ls, cat, and so on, and jq for manipulating JSON data, Nushell has been happily doing all this in a consistent way and making it easier, to boot. I'm surprised to see Nushell missing from this list.
Re: Modern Linux tools
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
That goes against the UNIX philosophy IMO. Tools doing "one thing and doing it well" also means that tools can and should be replaced when a superior alternative emerges. That's pretty much the whole point of simple utilities. I agree that you should learn the classic tools first as it's a huge investment for a whole career, but you absolutely should learn newer alternatives too. I don't care much for bat or eza, but…
Rust's user unfriendly build paradigm puts me off using a lot of these. Ripgrep is fine when I can install it from a package manager. But if I'm on some weird machine and need to build it then first I have to build rustc, and then it wants to download gigabytes of whatever, just to compile a better 'grep'?
> But if I'm on some weird machine
Then use grep, what’s your point? grep is not going away because ripgrep is better, but ripgrep might become more available?
I also notice you’re saying "if", so you’re not. So again, what’s your point?
Re: Modern Linux tools
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chezmoi makes this really easy: https://www.chezmoi.io/
I only skimmed through the website, but it looks like it only does dotfiles. So I'd need to maintain a separate script to keep my packages in sync. And a script with install commands wouldn't be enough - maybe I decided to stop using abcxyz, I'd like for the script to remove it. Versioning between the package and the dotfile can also sometimes be an issue.
Yes, chezmoi is for user configuration. System configuration is a drastically different domain. Personally, I manage that with Ansible.
Re: Modern Linux tools
#219These 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…
For scripting, no doubt about that! But if you want to use some custom tool you can use sshfs to mount whatever is on the other side onto your system and work from there. That has its own set of limitations but it makes some stuff much easier.