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68 Comments
- RoboDonut, on 09/08/2008, -3/+26This is the first time I've actually learned anything from one of these lists.
Dugg. - rowjimmy, on 09/08/2008, -0/+9good list, but they definitely should have included reverse-i searching (ctrl-r) - one of the biggest time-savers after using tab to complete files/list all files in a directory and the up/down arrows in general.
also learning awk & sed (and knowing when you should use perl instead of a crazy pipeline of awk/grep/sed/cat/tail/shuffle/cut/sort/etc) is a definite must as well. - klitzbtc, on 09/08/2008, -1/+10pushd and popd have always been one of my favorite relatively unknown commands. but I didn't know I could rotate the directory stack, what a great guide. dugg.
- iofthestorm, on 09/08/2008, -0/+9Yeah, IBM's articles like this are really informative. I expected some crappy useless commands but this stuff is really mostly stuff I didn't know before.
- Clark, on 09/08/2008, -1/+9I'm actually in a UNIX class in college right now. This may prove useful for scoring brownie points by forwarding this to the class mailing list...,
- TehDoctor, on 09/08/2008, -0/+6pushd/popd are the most underutilized bash builtins ever. I know people who never use cd, just {push,pop}d
And speaking of underutilized Unix tools, GNU screen is a godsend, but I know few people lucky enough to have discovered it. - V1ncent, on 09/08/2008, -0/+6I type therefore I command line
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -0/+6On the regexp example they say that ? is match at the end of the line, then they show grep examples where $ is the end of the line. They are also missing some quotes in the grep example section.
- counterplex, on 09/08/2008, -0/+6I gotta admit there's some satisfaction to seeing a 7 tool pipeline that you wrote and that returns just one value and it's the right one :)
- sulf, on 09/08/2008, -0/+6"and use scripts to do those things"
You mean like shell scripts? - SixOrSoPapers, on 09/08/2008, -0/+5Contrary to the article's assertion, Bash's file completion seems the most straightforward to me. Also, tab is easier on my wrists than escape.
- smotpoker, on 09/08/2008, -2/+7Ubuntu Linux (for which this submission is applicable if/when you decide to use the prompt)
- HonoredMule, on 09/08/2008, -0/+5I'm surprised there was no mention of cd -. For all the times I have to swap back and forth between two directories, it's perfect, and simpler/more appropriate than {push|pop}d. ("cd -" changes to previous directory.)
- radio4fan, on 09/08/2008, -0/+4Only those people who think that the comparative of 'good' is 'more good', and not 'better'.
;-)
Anyway, where do you think the comma should go? - souravondigg, on 09/08/2008, -0/+4I miss college. :(
- benoitcsirois, on 09/08/2008, -0/+4I have been using Ubuntu almost exclusively for my work now, and all open-source software. I can do advanced graphic design with GIMP, decent Video editing with Cinelerra, of course you can edit code with Quanta (so many other code editors also available).
The only things I cannot do under Linux are design Flash applications or play Windows-games. There are open-source solutions for almost everything else. - fluxion, on 09/08/2008, -0/+4holy ***** @ pushd/popd
this is gonna insanely useful. usually i just open a new terminal when i need to traverse another set of directories and end up with 50 bajillion terminals on my screen, each of which im slightly reluctant to terminate or use for a new task
probably the best "top 10, part2" list ever - psion01, on 09/08/2008, -0/+4Awesome! I just discovered Cinelerra last week when I built a brand new Ubuntu-based system and turned my back on Windows. Can you recommend any resources?
- SixOrSoPapers, on 09/08/2008, -0/+4I love those crazy pipelines. (I like perl, too).
- rowjimmy, on 09/08/2008, -0/+4lol, basically what xsquirrel said... sometimes chaining together a bunch of unix commands on stdin and stdout, piping stuff through a whole bunch of operations, etc makes good sense - but sometimes you'll end up making things far more difficult than they need to be. in those latter cases, perl is often a great alternative - it's meant (amongst other things that it is quite good at) for dealing with text-transformation-type-operations. learning to judge when it makes more sense to do something in perl versus a whole bunch of unix stdin => stdout type commands takes time, though, and a lot of trial and error. awk is - in some sense - the intermediate step (eg, you can have hashes etc to store & transform data, but are still going through text line by line) and is often overlooked by people (myself included until about 6 months ago) who have always had perl.
when dealing with command-line type operations (often processing large amounts of text - logs, data, config files, xml, whatever) there are usually at least 50 tools for the job - the trick is learning when to use what particular tools where and why - so that when the situation changes ever so slightly, you aren't stuck doing it the way you always did before, but rather can easily adapt to dealing with the precise situation at hand.
(so i've found, at least. i'm sure there are people far better at this than me, and i'm sure some of those people swear by some particular tool all the time. personally, in addition to a swiss army chainsaw, i like to have a normal pocket knife, a magnifying lens, a pair of tweezers, a few high-level abstractions and - when all else fails - an instruction manual.) - ethana2, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3What you say?!
AIX: You have no chance to survive make your time. - gandre, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3Please elaborate... I hate those crazy pipelines
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3http://www.perl.org/
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -1/+4Too bad commas dont exist, otherwise it may lead people to believe that there are 10 unix tips that are more good than other tips.
- inactive, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3pushd and popd aren't always useful. cd ~/ cd .. cd - and cd /[directory naame] are more useful than pushd and popd in many cases.
however, I never thought to use curl to check the weather! I'm writing a script right now to make full use of that cool idea! - slacka, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3In the regular expression table they said ? matches end of line but it's supposed to be $
the pushd/popd commands were cool though. - westyvw, on 09/08/2008, -3/+6Nope Unix is preferable for just about anything. Windows is pretty much not preferred for anything important, its just a brainwash to keep you, the user slow and stupid. 1 hand on the mouse and no brain involved.
- souravondigg, on 09/08/2008, -0/+3""Search" app (or Google Desktop). I personally prefer using the Search app, both basically index your filesystem and allow you to easily find files."
- The best "search" app for UNIX/Linux:
sudo updatedb
slocate file_name
Command line FTW! - benoitcsirois, on 09/08/2008, -0/+2Well if you want to go down that line of doing everything with the prompt ;p
Pidgin can be replaces by a keyboard-only app: centericq
Openoffice.org AND Quanta can be replaced my vi
VLC can be replaced with mplayer -vo aa file (and the movie will be played in ascii ;p)
Xchat can be replaced by ircii
Filezilla FTP can be replaced by ftp - steveorama, on 09/08/2008, -0/+2bash ftw!
- TehDoctor, on 09/08/2008, -0/+2Swap caps lock with escape. Look up xmodmap. Also really helps vi users, and stops you from accidentally turning on caPS LOCK MIDSENTENCE.
- TehDoctor, on 09/08/2008, -0/+2I have trouble with Perl being able to use pipelines in a script, so I use Perl for some intense stuff, make Perl shell out to a bash script with pipes, then build a pipeline to put the Perl script into. The best thing about Perl is not only is it an alternative to pipelines, but it still works with pipelines so you can do anything you need to.
And I need Perl to play nice with awk. Thanks, Larry! - counterplex, on 09/08/2008, -1/+3I remember when using wget on Windows for a network reimaging application I wrote that it wasn't able to handle files >2G well. It would download corrupted files which would cause the image to also be corrupted. Curl didn't have that problem.
Now I'm not sure if that was just that copy of wget compiled on Windows or not but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. I still use wget a lot but always view it with some suspicion and always revert to curl when I'm getting unexpected results. - maximumsteve1, on 09/08/2008, -3/+5Stroggoth, you are confused. I use tools made in the 1970s, and they do the job perfect. Sometimes I wish GUIs never existed
~command line til I die~ - TehDoctor, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1And back to you in kind:
1. Too much for something that should be an appliance in the corner
2. 6, 8, big ***** deal. Either way it's still like dropping an atomic bomb on an ant. 200GB of files is *not that much*, but it will take a long time to index. Not to mention that iTunes is slow as molasses to begin with, probably more so since NTFS is utter garbage. Indexing is also a one-time operation, and adding new stuff after that should not cause the whole thing to re-index, unless you run crap software... oh wait, my bad, you do. It doesn't matter if you turn off the eyecandy, the OS and file system are COMPLETE *****. Setting up a remote took 2 minutes, but that's because I don't have a 30 meg kernel with everything compiled in. If I did, it probably would have worked out of the box.
3. What are you trying to say? Yes, it's a tenth the cost. But storage size has nothing to do with indexing capability. Your iPod costs more because Apple rapes you with huge margins. A company putting out budget ITX boxes obviously will yield a good machine at a cheap price.
4. I feel sorry for the people who use your system, because you're obviously a ***** moron. I use Gentoo, not Ubuntu, thanks, and I have an hour commute every day to go work on a 6500 file huge C codebase. And in the end, yes, I will work on my own computer to make it do what I want, just like I work on my own car and my own house. You just must be a pussy.
People in IT don't know what the ***** they're doing. I have only ever met one good systems administrator in my life, and he started out as an engineer. You IT people like one-shot ***** solutions that require no thought since you're not capable of it. - D3koy, on 09/08/2008, -0/+2Though I agree with you (that song is terrible), that link is totally irrelevant and I would normally bury you. However, this is clearly a pattern of behavior with you, so you're blocked as well...
- JonnyCasino, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1Thumbs up for the curl tip!
- ScottyMcBaggs, on 09/10/2008, -0/+1Ahh you have what we in IT call engineeritis.
1. You code in C on a 6500 file (or did you mean line rofl) code-base but think 1000 dollars is a lot of money? Hint hint, you're either getting raped, have too many babies... or you're an intern.
What makes Linux so awesome? You know what makes it awesome, having the ***** symbol table just chilling in /boot and that it's static and has to be recompiled after trivial changes, Having to echo bools to pseudo files in /proc to get silly ***** to work, packages built by turds against conflicting libs for that specific distro version that crash on missing macros or functions... I could go on and on and i LIKE LINUX. Actually, I like Unix, and Linux is prevalent, free, and a lot like Unix. I don't use Windows for ANYTHING but media, ANYTHING. I tried MythTV and it sucked. There is no other way to slice it. It was Mythbuntu and no I don't care if you think I should have used Gentoo cause waiting three days for a compilation to finish is worth the lifetime of micro/pico/nanosecond speed ups.
Setting up the remote took ZERO minutes. I plugged the computer in, typed my username, and hit the media center button. It worked instantly. All of a sudden I am watching Macgyver through HDMI. Yes, Macgyver, which looks like it was recorded on ww2 era cameras, through HDMI, and it is thoroughly satisfying. At that point, I am an end user and the bloated kernel means NOTHING TO ME. It is totally abstracted. Let me explain in engineerage: "I have the API so I can talk to interface XYZ but have no clue what the algorithm behind XYZ is doing." The remote in this analogy is the API, and I call Remote.button.push() to bring up my media center. Remote.button.push() requires very little I/O and returns rather quickly.
2. 200 GB of MP3's ONLY, Let me re-iterate, I have TONS of media. That is just MP3 that is already on disk on a ***** XFS volume that probably right now is filled with thousands of cute files under lost+found due to a power outage that I am going to have to sift through, without real names, fun ***** like 2847098823eee723. And NTFS sucks? Sure whatever Windows sucks I wouldn't use it to do anything really I still haven't even and probably won't let that thing on my network, even the adapters are disabled, but for media, it is perfect.
3. I am trying to say a mini ITX is not going to stand up to what I put it through, nor would an iPod be sufficient for all media-related tasks. That is where the comparison comes from. I don't need to budget. I'm not billy g or anything but I can freaking afford 1000 dollars for my media centre, considering it is my main joy in life besides computing and women. That is, music and movies. I don't give a ***** about gentoo, and compiling everything from scratch. I have intimate experience with it on SPARC. Really, it sucks. And yea I don't care if your gentoo box still has a kernel under 1.4 megs so you can boot off a floppy. Look mine is 720 I can boot off a REAL floppy! That smaller number actually means I have a bigger e-wang.
4. People who use my system, what in the *****?!? This is my media center we're talking about. If anyone touches that remote, they will suffer the consequences. If you mean systems i run, only IT gets to caress their holiness.
In the end, you engineering folks don't understand that some people like when things *just work*, Some people will blow money that they are willing to admit is excessive for a solution that works with little intervention.
For instance, would you access a cd bit by bit using asm in a program you're writing, or would you use libcdio? You'd ***** use libcdio, cause someone has already put a lot of effort into making things easier for you, and it would be of SOME COST not necessarily monetarily to re create all of that library in assembly. It's great to understand how things work and all, but i just want my media center to never lag and come up when i hit a button. If I have to pay an ms tax and drop a grand, then so be it.
FYI: I started off in 'engineering' as in hardware not software if you really want to measure geekdicks. Yes, there are a lot of tards in IT, but you will meet those in every field. - subgeniusd, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1@Stroggoth - That's too simple and easy, your mom could do it. This is a lot more fun if you just can't EVER spend enough time playin' with your precious computer:
$ curl –s http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/ALY/RWRALY | grep BUFFALO
BUFFALO MOSUNNY 43 22 43 NE13 30.10R - TehDoctor, on 09/08/2008, -1/+2Interesting. How much did that cost? Why do you need 8 ***** GB of RAM to watch TV? I'm pretty sure TVs don't need 8GB of RAM. Oh, right... Vista is a huge, bloated piece of *****. Almost forgot. How long does it take to boot your TV?
Old mini ITX box + myth is probably a tenth of what you spent.
You must be a Windows sysadmin, or a you're a really bad Unix sysadmin because anyone who knows what they're doing would a) not have trouble spending a little time to get a cheap Linux box up and running and b) not recommend Windows for anything other than making a virus-aquarium like the one in the xkcd comic.
Get a real OS. - benoitcsirois, on 09/08/2008, -0/+1Here's a list of programs I use on Linux (they may not all be available in the Ubuntu repositories):
-GIMP - Graphics (editing and design): A lot better than hardcore photoshop fans believe. A must if you do graphics.
-Cinelerra - Video editing: May be slightly unstable from my experience, but works quite well.
-ffmpeg - Media conversion: I re-compiled ffmpeg myself because the one included in Ubuntu repositories didn't support enough formats.
-Pidgin (chat on MSN, Google talk and many others)
-Openoffice.org (very good office suite)
-VLC to play videos
-Azureus - Bittorrent file transfer
-Rhythmbox to interface with my ipod nano and to play music
-Brasero Disc Burning (burn CDs)
-Wine (Windows emulator... sometimes useful)
-Virtual Box (install virtual operating systems, like Windows or other OS.. but virtually)
-Mixxx to pretend that I'm a famous DJ and mix songs together
-"Search" app (or Google Desktop). I personally prefer using the Search app, both basically index your filesystem and allow you to easily find files.
-sopcast for linux to play sopcast network streams
-Quanta + for code editing (PHP, html, whatever)
-Xchat (useful if you need to connect to IRC)
-Openssh (allows you to access your computer from somewhere else, or to easily and securely transfer files between 2 computers)
-Tomboy notes (Write notes on your desktop, saves automatically)
-Cheese (unstable), Take picture and videos using your webcam.
-Games: Urban Terror (so many other similar games)
-Filezilla FTP client with GUI (if you require file transfer over FTP) - torgreed, on 09/08/2008, -0/+1The only thing good about wget, in my books, is it saves the file by default. If you forget with curl, you get a huge binary dump to your terminal.
The wgets I've used have also lacked support for https:, which makes them unsuitable for (say) downloading things that need to be over a secure link.
wget, though, does have cookie support.
I've got a script that uses curl's '--range' option to defeat per-connection throttling on http downloads. (It's OK, because we've been told that there is no per-connection throttling, and the only possible limit on download speed is the total capacity of the VPN. Therefore, my hack couldn't possibly make downloads go 4x faster. And yet... it does.)
Don't know about doing any of this on Windows. curl is provided by OS X by default, wget isn't. - torgreed, on 09/08/2008, -0/+1I hope people don't take the 'whoami' examine to identify root seriously.
It's much safer to use 'id -u', then it doesn't matter _what_ the root account is called. Because it's not like the kernel or other system libraries look at the name, they look at the UID.
So (Korn/Zsh):
if [[ $(id -u) -eq 0 ]]; then
print -u2 "Do not run this script as the superuser."
exit 1
fi
(On Solaris, make sure /usr/xpg4/bin is early in the PATH.) - mrBitch, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1@benoitcsirois RE: " -Cinelerra - Video editing: May be slightly unstable from my experience, but works quite well.
-Tomboy notes (Write notes on your desktop, saves automatically)
-Cheese (unstable), Take picture and videos using your webcam.
-Games: Urban Terror (so many other similar games) "
-- Thank you for the apps suggestions! ( never heard of "cheese", "Cinelerra", or "Tomboy Notes" ). - mrBitch, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1RE: " It's much safer to use 'id -u', then it doesn't matter _what_ the root account is called. "
Thank you for that tip, it's actually a damn good idea to check if a root account is about to execute a potentially very dangerous script. - mohtasham, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1In my opinion history expansion was the most useful one that I didn't know before.
- ethana2, on 09/08/2008, -0/+1I use colemak, so CapsLock is my b....ackspace.
xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock"
# turns off caps
xset r 66
# sets the key to repeat - ScottyMcBaggs, on 09/09/2008, -0/+1Actually TehDoctor, let me respond to your comments in order:
1. It cost just 1000 dollars.
2. It clearly says 6 GB, and I use it for ALL media functions, I don't think you understand: I have approx. 200 GB of music alone. That's mp3 on disk, I don't even have a clue what my lossless archive that I want to put on disk is, or my DVD collection. Simply indexing the ***** takes forever in iTunes as well as the myth frontend. The more RAM, with the quad core processor, is the first smooth media experience I have ever had. Even my dual core mac with 4 GB of ram can't keep up. So no, it doesn't really have anything to do with Vista, in fact I don't touch the OS. I disabled the shiny effects, like I do in Linux, and that was about all I did with the OS. I hit this nice little green button on a remote and my media center comes up. Wow, works out of the ***** box. Incredible. And from the time I hit the power button on the remote to when it's up is less than ten seconds. Suspend works? Holy ***** what a miracle of the lord fsm himself.
3. Old mini ITX + myth for 100 bucks (that's one tenth of 1000 right? or am I the retard) that can handle a media catalog the size of mine? Dude, my ***** ipod costs more than that, and holds a tiny fraction of my media.
4. No, I am a Linux sysadmin, and have been using Linux since I was barely old enough to wipe my ass and I am guessing you have been an Ubuntu fanboi for a few years. Yea, make a 1.5-2 hour commute everyday and tell me you want to dick around with the piece of ***** mythtv frontend after being a real sysadmin, in charge of production boxes, not your ubuntu laptop.
You have what us in IT like to call engineer's syndrome. You live in this fantastic world where business doesn't exist and it's acceptable to spend all of your time tinkering. Sometimes, normal people like me prefer to just throw in a Macgyver DVD and hit PLAY, and see some kick ass. - emarketingbg, on 09/09/2008, -0/+0They fulfill my knowledge again.
The push/popd tip is great! -
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