Awesome Alternative CLI

a list of programs to replace the ancient Coreutils

Common Commands

alias

This is being mentinoned as a sort of pre resqiuite to everything else. You'll probably want whatever you switch to to keep working like you're used to, so using aliases can help. To make them persistant you'll likely need to put them in your shell's config file, so your .bashrc, .zshrc, or whatever depending on what shell you use. This is particularly powerful when you consider that these alises can include flags (ex: alias ls="lsd -la") or be basically full scripts (ex: alias cb="git branch | fzf | sed 's/\* //g' | xargs -I '{}' git checkout {}")

it's also worth mentioning that these scripts themselves can be used as aliases in a way using using functions

for example with this,

function timer() {
  total=$1
  for ((i=total; i>0; i--)); do sleep 1; printf "Time remaining $i secs \r"; done
  echo -e "\a"
}

in the shell config file you can run timer 10 directly or use it as part of other scripts

finally, if you need an 'alias' that can work across shells would an option is to drop an executable script somewhere in your path.

uname

uname is used to get info on the kernel version and system architecture

For a fancy system information display:

screenfetch -

lemongrab -

neofetch -

For actually getting debug infor about the kernel:

cat /proc/version or dmesg | grep -i "linux version" but neither provided any info left out from uname -a.

you may be able to find more information about your kernel by digging around in /lib/modules/[kernel version]

depending on your bootloader, you may find more info in /boot/loader/entries/[yourOS].conf

awk, sed, tr, and cut

awk, sed, tr, and cut are often used for shell scripting as data is piped from the output from one command to another.

see also grep

choose -

cal

okay, so cal itself isn't even a core util, but I'm counting it anyway dangit. It just displays a cute lil' terminal calendar. Lightweight, sure, but there's better out there:

khal -

cat

cat is supposed to be short for concatenate, so that you can use cat file1 file2 to merge two files onto stdout, but, really most people just use it to quickly read a file in the terminal and it pretty much sucks for that.

bat -

mdcat -

hexyl -

cfdisk

cd

See [Directory Navigation]

cp

rsync

cron

curl & wget

date

dc (desk calculator) & bc

dc, a calculator that you have to look up to figure out how to use. bc, a better but still pretty lame calculator

qalc - Qalculate! bitwise -

...python? - I mean, python's interactive shell makes for a great caculator too.

Honorable mention: speedcrunch - speedcrunch is gui based, but not in the god-awful way that a lot of gui calculators are. It works really well. If you've got a display server running and can it's worth it.

dd

df

duf -

diff

diff-so-fancy icdiff delta

dig

dmesg

du

ncdu

echo

echoowo lolcat figlet toilet banner

env

https://direnv.net

file

find

gcc

gdb

gef

git

radicle

grep/egrep

ripgrep

history

resh

ip / ifconfig

ls

lsd exa

lsof lsusb lstopo lshw lsblk lsns lspci

make

man

mkdir

mv

nc (netcat)

netstat

nice

ping

prettyping -

ps

rm/rmdir

screen

tmux

sleep

sort

ssh

mosh -

tar/gzip/bzip/etc

trap

time

top

htop ghtop

traceroute

uniq

runiq -

wc

Shells

zsh fish xonsh

Shell scripting

up (ultimate plumber) rat

Networking

scapy

Text editors

vim

spacevim neovim

Directory navigation

nnn ranger autojump

New basic Tools

moreutils hr fltrdr irssi jq crex entr noti pandoc uxy

Task Managment

taskwarrior

Security Realted

Overclocking

stress-ng dmidecode

Communication

irssi lx gist

Multimedia

orca-c waifu-2x mpd+ncmpcpp

Internet

lynx w3m browsh youtube-dl

other

wttr