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 tool or command is surprisingly simple, powerful, and yet underrated?" (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by mfat@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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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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[–] thejevans@lemmy.ml 44 points 5 days ago (4 children)

jq?

[–] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I use it occasionally but every time I need to do something a tiny bit more complex than "extract field from an object" I have to spend half an hour studying its manual, at which point it's faster to just write a Python script doing exactly what I need it to do.

[–] Nibodhika@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Check out https://www.nushell.sh/ I use it for exactly that, i.e. complex extract and convert files

[–] deadcream@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 days ago

I actually installed it recently out of curiosity, but I'm hesitant about learning its advanced features like that. At least jq is a standalone tool that's more ubiquitous than nushell, so you can rely on it even in environments that you don't fully control (e.g. CI like GitHub Actions). And if you use it in some public code/scripts then other people will be more familiar with it too.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago

yq can do both JSON and YAML :)

[–] thingsiplay@beehaw.org 5 points 5 days ago

https://github.com/johnkerl/miller is like awk, sed, cut, join, and sort for name-indexed data such as CSV, TSV, and tabular JSON

[–] BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 3 points 5 days ago

Funny how this was one of the first tools I learnt once I "seriously" started my linux journey, lol