Useful Linux commands
In my first years using Linux, I quickly learned a lot of basic commands to use in the terminal: cd, ls, cat etc. Only recently did I discover that while these commands are incredibly helpful, they did not need to be so basic: alternatives existed, that enhanced them in many ways. Here is a list of some replacements I integrated in my everyday workflow that brought meaningful improvements.
A better cd: zoxide
For this one, you will also need fzf, a fuzzy file finder, to use zoxide to its full potential.
This one also need an additional shell setup step; for me (bash), I just appended this to my .bashrc:
# init zoxide
eval "$(zoxide init --cmd cd bash)"A better ls and tree: eza
My current aliases for eza are:
# list all (including hidden) files as a list,
# in human mode, with git status
alias lf='eza -lah --git'
# same but as a tree
alias treza='lf --tree'A better cat: bat
A better top: btop
A shorter man: tldr
This one is not exactly better, but a lot of the time I used man, I was just looking for a basic rundown of the most common usecases. This is exactly what tldr offers.
Other commands I didn't look at yet
A better
grep:ripgrepA better
find:fdA better terminal (OK not exactly a command but still):
tmux