Which Linux command or utility is simple, powerful, and surprisingly unknown to many people or used less often?

This could be a command or a piece of software or an application.

For example I’m surprised to find that many people are unaware of Caddy, a very simple web server that can make setting up a reverse proxy incredibly easy.

Another example is fzf. Many people overlook this, a fast command-line fuzzy finder. It’s versatile for searching files, directories, or even shell history with minimal effort.

    • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
      191·
      3 days ago

      I use it occasionally but every time I need to do something a tiny bit more complex than “extract field from an object” I have to spend half an hour studying its manual, at which point it’s faster to just write a Python script doing exactly what I need it to do.

        • deadcream@sopuli.xyz
          2·
          2 days ago

          I actually installed it recently out of curiosity, but I’m hesitant about learning its advanced features like that. At least jq is a standalone tool that’s more ubiquitous than nushell, so you can rely on it even in environments that you don’t fully control (e.g. CI like GitHub Actions). And if you use it in some public code/scripts then other people will be more familiar with it too.