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.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
    16·
    5 days ago

    socat - connect anything to anything

    for example

    socat - tcp-connect:remote-server:12345

    socat tcp-listen:12345 -

    socat tcp-listen:12345 tcp-connect:remote-server:12345

  • friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    29·
    6 days ago

    Not powerful, but often useful, column -t aligns columns in all lines. EG

    $ echo {a,bb,ccc}{5,10,9999,888} | xargs -n3
a5 a10 a9999
a888 bb5 bb10
bb9999 bb888 ccc5
ccc10 ccc9999 ccc888
$ echo {a,bb,ccc}{5,10,9999,888} | xargs -n3 | column -t
a5      a10      a9999
a888    bb5      bb10
bb9999  bb888    ccc5
ccc10   ccc9999  ccc888
  • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.mlEnglish
    261·
    6 days ago

    yes

    The most positive command you’ll ever use.

    Run it normally and it just spams ‘y’ from the keyboard. But when one of the commands above is piped to it, then it will respond with ‘y’. Not every command has a true -y to automate acceptance of prompts and that’s what this is for.

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
    30·
    7 days ago

    zoxide. It’s a fabulous cd replacement. It builds a database as you navigate your filesystem. Once you’ve navigated to a directory, instead of having to type cd /super/long/directory/path, you can type zoxide path and it’ll take you right to /super/long/directory/path.

    I have it aliased to zd. I love it and install it on every system

    You can do things like using a partial directory name and it’ll jump you to the closest match in the database. So zoxide pa would take you to /super/long/directory/path.

    And you can do partial paths. Say you’ve got two directories named data in your filesystem.

    One at /super/long/directory/path1/data

    And the other at /super/long/directory/path2/data

    You can do zoxide path2 data and you’ll go to /super/long/directory/path2/data

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    11·
    6 days ago

    netstat -tunl shows all open ports on the machine to help diagnose any firewall issues.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        Came here to say both of these things. (Awk and “> simple”.)

        To be totally honest, I don’t think awk is any more complicated than something like grep, it’s just that regular expressions get used more often so they’re typically more familiar. In the same way that programming languages with c-like syntax (like Java and C#) often feel easier than ones that don’t (like Haskell and Clojure).

  • Serge Matveenko@lemmings.worldEnglish
    261·
    7 days ago

    I don’t see anyone mentions htop. So, I will:) Just works, could be installed in any distro. Much more friendly than top but isn’t bloated with features as some other alternatives are.