Top Command-Line Secrets From Linux Gods

Summary: Speaking of fun, there's nothing quite like a quiet week sitting around a bar and talking about the industry, and last week The Voice of Linux ran one such talk on command-line secrets. It's intended to render most web pages "There are a lot of really good reasons to use the command line," writes The Voice of Linux's masterminds, "and it's a powerful and concise way of letting you interact with your computer.

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Speaking of fun , nothing beats a quiet week sitting around a bar and talking about the industry, and last week The Voice of Linux had one such talk event on command-line secrets.

It intends to render most The web page

"has a lot of really good reasons to use the command line," writes the architects of The Voice of Linux, "it's a powerful and concise way to interact with your computer. "

However, I'd like to take a moment to look at some of its more obscure uses (some would say pointless and not worth doing)." They added.

The magazine listed the elinks web browser first: "It may not look as polished as its competitors, but it aims to be able to render most web pages. "It also has a geeky chic," they explain. "It comes in handy when you need to quickly check if you can access a web page from a computer that can only be accessed via SSH. "And

then there are some useful tips from Wikipedia to look up some definitions, etc.

Important for maintenance

" Command line tricks are fun, really fun. For example, Google+ blogger Alessandro Ebersole said enthusiastically, “But they forgot cowsay, which can be used to make you smile in a dark terminal. "

"The command line is important for maintenance. "You can use bash scripts to automate complex tasks with just a few shortcut keys (or just one)," he added. "

Other command line tricks that Ebersol would put into the original list include sl (steam locomotive), and these weird ideas:

* % cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans
* % nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.
* % [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].
* % make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.
* % man: why did you get a divorce?
man :: Too many arguments.

The most precious essence

"Command line secrets? No such thing." blogger Robert Bergson said, "Disappointed, newbie? Just hit 'help'. I want a hint 'man' whatever you want. Want more and something different? Type 'ls /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin | less', pick up a few baby commands, and 'man' all night Well. I've been doing that for over a decade now and still have a lot of fun."

Bergson can't remember how long ago he discovered 'ssh', but "it's the brightest thing in the free/open source software world. A gem," he said.

"The power of ssh is that you can be happy typing a command on one computer, and you can be 100 times happier doing the same thing on 100 computers," he adds, "of course, typing 100 times. Commands are no joke. So learn how to log in securely over ssh without a password to make ssh remote login transparent."

Use it with respect.

Of course , "As with any happy thing, someone is addicted to sabotage." Bergson warns, "As root, you can enter commands to delete everything, or put this It's all messed up. This is the nuke button, like global leaders do world affairs, think twice before pressing that button, assess the consequences of doing it, and use it with respect and noble motives. ' he added.

"I once deleted a filesystem because my thumb accidentally hit the space bar while typing a command," Bergson concluded. "I've only ever done this kind of stupid thing once, frankly."

Powerful

Google+ blogger Gonzalo: Velasco C is less enthusiastic.

"Even though GUI tools are easier to use, command lines are still powerful in the *nix world," he told us, "and even some advanced MacOS users use them."

For Gonzalo Velasco C himself, " The only commands I want to master are process control and kill commands, I want to use ctrl+alt+backspace because I can use that process that is giving me trouble, I also want to master the tar.gz file Management - that stuff still gives me a headache," he said.

You're doing something wrong

Last but not least, SoylentNews blogger hairyfeet has a completely different point of view.

"I just want to talk about one thing to flesh out the CLI coverage: If you don't do IT and you do repetitive things that are simply, primitively logging something useful, but you Still using the command line, then 'you're on a dead end'" says hairyfeet. "There's nothing magical about the command line interface - it's just a graphical interface from the 1970s!"

Today, there are a lot of "useful graphical interfaces, thanks to faster CPUs and more memory, not cheap watches from the dollar store - we even have IDEs and scripting languages ​​that are vastly more than those of the 70's vintage, You can work over a WAN or a LAN and interact with the lowest level of the operating system, and everything is getting easier to use thanks to technologies like intellisense and auto-completion," he explained, "so for God's sake, if you're not that 3% of sysadmins, working in a byte-counting world, would you dig that rubbish out of the old accounts?"

Is this Hairyfeet's best command-line advice? "Don't—get swayed by 21st-century fantasies, learn how to actually use languages ​​and tools," he concluded, "Leave the command line in the dust, and throw floppy disks in the dustbin of history. "