/moderntools

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Modern Unix Tools

Modern problems require modern solutions.

This is a collection of very useful utilities that I've collected by asking the internet "What modern utilities should be a standard part of a modern unixy distro and why?"

Additions and corrections via raised issue or pull requests are welcome.

Utilities

System use and management

  • htop, "a cross-platform interactive process viewer".
  • An htop-like utility called bottom also got some votes.
  • tmux, a terminal multiplexer.
  • Some people mentioned screen, the classic tool in this space, but noted that it's getting pretty long in the tooth and tmux is a pure improvement.
  • HTTPie, a CURL-adjacentish command-line HTTP client for testing and debugging web APIs.
    • Xh is related, described as reimplementing a subset of HTTPie's interface with an emphasis on simplicity and speed.
  • glow, a markdown-on-the-command-line tool.
  • Lowdown, also a markdown tool, also interesting.
  • fzf, a command-line "fuzzy finder".
  • tldr - simplified man pages with practical examples. The world has needed this for a long time.
  • zsh: A modernized, modular update to Bash with a lot of new utility built in. ** OhMyZsh + Alacritty: this trifecta of terminal emulator, shell and shell extensions turns out to be a powerful combination.
  • Tree: show you the tree structure of directories, a bit like microdosing on Midnight Commander from back in the day.
  • Broot: better navigation of directory trees.
  • atool, a set of scripts that wrap common compressed-file-format handlers.
  • mcfly: replaces the usual ctrl-r shell-history search handler with a more powerful tool, super cool.
  • ncdu, friend of htop and a nice disk usage display for the terminal.
  • LazyDocker and LazyGit, CLI improvements for Docker and Git respectively.

Data management

A collection of modern data migration, conversion and management tools.

  • Gron, a tool for making JSON greppable.
  • VisiData: a tabular data visualization multitool.
  • jq and jid are both fantastic tools for inspecting and manipulating JSON.
  • duc, also a nice drive-use visualizer.
  • rclone, a cloud-storage data-moving multitool.
  • csvkit: if you spend a lot of time working with comma-separated values, accept no substitutes.
  • matplotlib: the upgrade over gnuplot you've been waiting for.
  • xidel: this looks like jq-for-html, and I'm intrigued.
  • nushell: A structured-data pipeline-building shell.
  • miller, a CSV multitool.
  • st, "Simple Statistics", a command-line app that calculates the sum, mean, standard deviation, and a few other things about a set of numbers.
  • ijq, an "interactive jq".
  • Datamash: Gnu, I know, but an interesting command-line-math tool.

Specialized Tools

"Do one thing and do it well."

  • LatexDiff: Like it says on the tin, Diff for Latex.
  • dyff: diff for yaml.

Revisiting The Classics

A collection of tools best described as "A better $X"

  • duf a better df.
  • ripgrep, a line-oriented search tool, described as a better grep.
  • sd, a better sed.
  • fd, a better find
  • bat, a better cat.
  • dust, a better du.
  • lsd and exa, new takes on the venerable ls.
  • There's also zoxide: an interesting update to, of all things, cd!
  • ag: the Silver Searcher, a better ack (which was in turn born "a better grep").
  • just: Just, a modernization of the venerable Make.

Quality-Of-Life command line improvements.

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