I literally only use it when a how-to guide explains exactly what to do and why. Then I forget what I did and look up how to do it again six months later. I’m fine with this arrangement, though I will prefer to have to use it less.

You need a purpose. For instance I needed to copy and edit config files for a bunch terminals my company has deployed last week. Instead of manually copying the template directory 80 times and editing the 2 lines that needed to be changed in the parameter file for each one I used powershell to extract the name and id for each terminal from the log files and create copy of the template directory for each one, then replace the terminal name and id in the parameter file of the new directory with the ones extracted from the logs. This would have taken me all day to do manually and it only took about 45 minutes to write up the script and run it. I did have some prior experience with doing this kind of thing but hadn’t tied them all together lile that before so i learned some stuff.

Maybe you need to have some sort of objective before you get started, otherwise yeah, you don’t have much to do in the console :) In my case I only use linux for work, so I’m ssh-ing away and running commands to compile this, apply that, show me the logs for this, grep that, etc.

or zoxide and yazi

Saved! Thank you so much.

I’ve used Linux full-time since late 2020 and I never knew about ctrl+y and ctrl+u.

I’d also like to contribute some knowledge.

aliases

You can put these into your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc or whatever shell you use.

###
### ls aliases
###
# ls = colors
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

# ll = ls + human readable file sizes
alias ll='ls -lh --color=auto'

# lla = ll + show hidden files and folders
alias lla='ls -lah --color=auto'

###
### other aliases
###
# set color for different commands
alias diff='diff --color=auto'
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias ip='ip --color=auto'

# my favourite way of navigating to a far-off folder
# this scans my home folder and presents me with a list of
#    fuzzy-searchable folders
#    you need fzf and fd installed for this alias to work
alias cdd='cd "$(sudo fd -t d . ${HOME} | fzf)"'

recommendations

ncdu - a shell-based tool to analyze disk usage, think GNOME’s baobab or KDE’s filelight but in the terminal

zellij - tmux but easy and with nice colors

atuin - shell history but good, fuzzy-searchable. If you still have the basic shell history (when pressing ctrl+r), I cannot recommend this enough.

ranger - a terminal file-browser (does everything I need and way more)

What’s the shortcut for scrolling the terminal?

Saving this! Absolutely gold, thanks for writing it up. You’re what makes the Linux community cool. ❤️

tab completion works in more places than you might expect

I’ve found tab to be such a nice “please give me a hint” button.

• Bonus tip : Sometimes you won’t get auto complete because there’s too many possibilities and the computer can’t be certain which one you want. Hitting tab multiple times will show the possibilities, so you can type in enough characters to remove ambiguity, hit tab again, and boom auto complete!

…That was a terribly convoluted explanation I’m sorry. Just try hitting tab multiple times for fun if you’re stuck it’s kinda handy. Lol

If you’re looking for a full list of these kind of navigation shortcuts, they all come from readline so read the man page for that. Or just look up the basic navigation of emacs which is what readline is mimicking.

I’ve been using the commandline for so long but was always too lazy to look up the rest of these commands after ctrl+a/e and ctrl+r THANK YOU!!!

post this commend again and again! There’s always lazy idiots like me who will be helped that way!

Makes me realize just how illogical and bad these shortcuts are

• alt-. also pastes the last argument of the previous command (useful if you need to modify it a bit)
• instead of any shortcuts starting with “alt” you can also press “esc” followed by the second key, e.g. pressing “esc”, releasing it and then “a” is the same as pressing “alt-a” (useful if you have only one hand available, or if alt is not availalble)
• if you put a space before a command, it will not be saved in history (useful sometimes, e.g. if you pass a password directly as an argument)

Nice list, TIL about Ctrl+U and Ctrl+Y.

If I may add, Ctrl+X into Ctrl+E opens $EDITOR to edit the current line.

i’d also recommend scoop. when i had windows before i switched, i preferred it to winget or chocolately.

As an administrator, powershell is an essential tool these days. There are tunables that Microsoft simply only exposes via powershell even in their cloud Microsoft 365 environments. Just last month I had to rely on Powershell to trim previous versions on SharePoint, and 2 weeks ago I had to use Powershell to adjust a parameter on Exchange.

But also being able to pop a Powershell session and quickly apply a registry fix or run a diagnostic command or even just install a piece of software without disrupting a user’s work is absolutely brilliant (plus saves a call when I can just email back and say “I’ve pushed it remotely, reboot and it should be sorted now”)

It’s not a big deal via terminal but for me and probably the average user, a decent update UI is superior. I want my computer to remind me like once a week and then update with one or two clicks. Updating via terminal does not appeal to me.

But how do Linux users handle the crippling loneliness of their operating system not pestering them with ads on every update? How else can you know if your computer loves you? Where is the warmth of the corporate embrace?

plus it makes you feel like a hacker for a few seconds

Guess what I did last night? I spent 4 hours working on getting PSD, XCF and KRA thumbnailers working in Mint. It took custom scripts to be written and each one required different commands because KRA files are just a zip file so you have to extract that and grab one of 3 possible preview files that might exist inside that zip and make that the thumbnail, while in gimp files you cant just use convert command, even convert[0] will only turn the first layer into a thumbnail and thats completely useless. And to top off all that, I finally got thumbnails working in gnome/nautilus but Only the XCF thumbs will generate in cinnamon/nemo (I still have no clue why that is) but I cannot just switch to gnome because there is technically no gnome variant of Mint so gnome doesnt work 100%… etc etc etc

Linux is still not there, this stuff should be simple and automatic. If a 20 year professional took 4 hours to get this far, the average user will give up immediately. Yes Mint is still my daily driver, but seriously thumbnails should not be this much work.

“Hey computer, I don’t like when you ask for that confirmation, just do it”

“Oh, -y, I got you”

middle mouse click is like magic, but CTRL-SHIFT-C/V usually works

What Ctrl+Shift+(do a little spin)+Ins isn’t intuitive enough for you??

Jokes aside, that’s understandable. I guess I’ve just become used to it, but there must be some way to override the default binding if you don’t like it… Personally I like the kitty terminal’s approach which uses mod+c/v for copy and paste in the terminal like you’d expect, while still leaving ctrl+c/v for sigint and verbatim respectively.

you’ve seen top, get ready for btop

I setup open SSH on windows so you can swing it both ways!

My main gripe is it runs cmd.exe and I gotta powershell to jump into that. If you auto powershell it doesn’t work right.

next step to full on conversion is making your own dotfiles repo :)

The moment I loved the FOSS community was when I went on an Linux IRC channel, complained about my wifi not working, and some stranger messaged me detailed instructions with a patch in 20 minutes that completely fixed my issue.

I once plugged my linux laptop into the scanner and it just worked

I spent days tinkering with proprietary, outdated (seriously, win XP as target) programs that provide sort-of drivers, and nothing worked, on windows.

Mine worked out of the box on mint. Like, it detected the network HP shitbox and I could print, no user intervention. I was floored.

Amen. Hallelujah! AMEN! Ooh yeah brothers and sisters, AaaAAaAmen!

PS: this is not a cult BTW

amen