7 Essential Command Line Tools (2022)

Introducing seven of my favourite command line tools that I use every day.
CHAPTERS
==========
00:00 - Start
00:40 - Exa
01:36 - Bat
02:06 - Ripgrep
04:08 - FZF
05:20 - Zoxide
06:42 - Entr
07:17 - Midnight Commander
TOOLS
======
* exa - github.com/ogham/exa
* bat - github.com/sharkdp/bat
* ripgrep - github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
* fzf - github.com/junegunn/fzf
* zoxide - github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide
* entr - github.com/eradman/entr
* mc - midnight-commander.org/
GEAR
=====
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* Anker Thunderbolt 3 Cable - geni.us/BTOsQ
* Aluminium Armour Case - geni.us/M5ph
SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
=====================
* Buy me a coffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/techcrafted
AFFILIATE LINKS
==============
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[@echobucket]

For those watching in 2024, exa got renamed to eza.

[@SmashLpTv]

Thank you very much, kind sir or madam!

[@alisanan9090]

Not to be confused. Exa was deprecated, so eza is a maintained fork of exa.

[@danjto]

If you forget and install exa, you end up with eza anyway, at least that's what happened to me using pacman

[@randint]

So THAT's why the exa I installed just stopped working one day!

[@baruchben-david4196]

Must not apply to all distros, though. I installed this as exa; in fact, I can't find eza either in the synaptic package manager or in apt.

[@scialomy]

If your system/terminal allows, exa --icons is a wonder!

[@ilvestaavi]

Using dash to jump between last place is actually available for normal cd as well. Plus in git you can switch between branches.

[@DavidRadkowski]

Despite having more than 20 years of Linux under my belt, I still enjoy watching those little gems from TechCraft 👍 well done 👍

[@tech_craft]

That’s part of the joy of Linux for me: there’s always more to explore and learn about.

[@jda4887]

likewise, ive discovered new toys ! For my personal use as i have to stick to traditional tools for work (we still have plenty of AIX scripts to maintain).

[@user-kq7xf6fb6f]

senpai 😊

[@ThrivingInLife]

Midnight Commander brings back the nostalgic Norton Commander - Before we had windows, we had norton commander.

[@shinwadone]

And total commander on windows

[@frank-michaeljaeschke4798]

As I was familiar with Norton Commander, mc was one of the first tools I used when I started my Linux journey back in 1997.

[@nebilkisa8594]

Hi Rob! I am glad I discovered your channel about 2 years ago. In your case it is really not about the number of videos uploaded, but the content and value added to people's productivity watching your content. You have a great way to present the subject matter at hand without any fuss and distracting pop ups, extra comments or any other annoying extra, like some unsuitable background music :-) It is straight to the point and boiled down to the essential piece of information. Regarding this particular video, something new learnt every day. Despite being a seasoned Unix/Linux power user, I added the presented little command line tools to few of my systems, MacOS, RPI and Debian laptop. Thanks a lot and keep it coming! PS: +1 for an extra video about MC 🙂

[@josimarneto1031]

This is my favorite video ever. Of all time. Including all platforms. And I am putting Star Wars, 2001 - A Space Odyssey, West World, Ex Machina, and all those TV series, everything there, for comparison. And I even didn't finish the video yet (I am still at the zoxide part, as I am installing every shown program, along the way).

[@RagasonPvP]

I've watched many of these kinds of videos in the past, but this is just next level; I think I'm going to use every tool mentioned going forward!

[@repr0bate]

I would love a full video on Midnight Commander. Great video--thanks!

[@beatnixnthings]

I really like the pace of your videos. Anyone else, this would've been a 20-30 minute video. The pace makes it digestible, and the chapters/time codes mean I can jump back in to rewatch a given section if it didn't quite stick. Explanations are crisp, concise, and clear. nice work.

[@OddWoz]

Exactly. I’ve learned so much from his videos that weren’t well explained/demoed elsewhere, or at all.

[@philipdavidson1558]

Great video, thanks for all your informative content. I would very much like to see a full video on Midnight Commander

[@barjo_]

Installed a couple here from your list that look super useful. Good list and well delivered!

[@superxereu]

Watching these videos feels like getting a power up playing video games. Very useful gems here, thank you for the superb job you've done

[@JoeSteele]

This is great stuff! I was not aware of fzf or entr -- I will definitely be adding those to my daily use

[@Gideonblade]

Those are useful tools. Thank you and I am glad that you are back producing content.

[@perutherford]

Please talk more about mc. Used it years ago and didn’t know it was still around. I would like to know what it is capable of these days.

[@tech_craft]

👍 it’s an amazing piece of software. I really like software that sticks around so I don’t have always learn something new for a core task like file management

[@mrsuncure1259]

Thank You, i learned a couple new tools. It's very helpful

[@rossgeography]

Wow - colour coding in the terminal ! you’re making me want to learn more terminal tools - I know it’s powerful but the simple addition of colour is making it way more enticing !

[@mayurchavhan8590]

I'm fan of these tools and I love how well you've explained this. I would love to see more these kinds of tools videos which makes Linux experience more powerful.

[@alanjrobertson]

Yes please to an MC video! Definitely going to investigate these replacements!

[@oldpain7625]

Awesome! Some very useful tools you've shown there. Thanks dude! Subbed!

[@Child0TK]

Great video. I've used MC for years. Also NC from back in DOS days, it became a staple tool for me. I would love to see more about MC and see how I could maybe use it more.

[@melodymonger]

Great selection of really useful tools well explained - thank you 👍.

[@elatedbento]

Entr is an absolute gem! Thanks for sharing ❤❤

[@krzysztoflupa259]

true, the rest of them are useless

[@elatedbento]

@@krzysztoflupa259 useless if you already know them, yes. Entr was the only one I didn't now and was an absolute gem. fzf, bat, eza, etc. I use daily and are amazing. fzf is just excellent.

[@enkiimuto1041]

I like your enthusiasm good sir. Subscribed.

[@user-tb5pf9tw6i]

Hi Tech, Thanks for your Video. I've installed fzf to help me in my daily work

[@PaPaTheGMan1215]

Thanks for the informative video. I also love MC and feel I've only scratched the surface of its capabilities. I would very much enjoy a dedicated MC video.

[@vorncoza]

Nice video - simple and helpful :) Looking forward to more videos from your channel.

[@alexandrostsagkaropoulos]

That was so helpful. Thanks a lot!

[@reidchatham]

This was awesome, thank you! Wheres that midnight commander video?

[@murtadha96]

This is really useful. Thank you!

[@StefanWolfrum]

Amazing as always, Rob! I‘ve used unix based machines since the early 90s (SUN & SGI machines at university) and up to today (Macs, Raspberry Pis). But I didn‘t know that folks have thought about how to make even the most basic commands like ls, cat, grep, cd even better! Will try all of them asap! Oh, and MidnightCommander!! Is that still around! Wow! I still remember Norton Commander which was the original, I think?! Thanks so much, again!!

[@tech_craft]

I came to mc from Norton Commander. It’s such a well-designed interaction model that I find it hard to go back.

[@johntamplin]

@@tech_craft Aha! I thought I recognised the pedigree of Norton Commander; happy memories. Now, we just need to find the 'offspring' of Borland Sidekick and Wordstar, and I'll be ecstatic. :)

[@StefanWolfrum]

@@tech_craft Yes, of course, Norton Commander! My oh my, flashback memories!

[@Skylla54]

entr 😍 I was not aware of it and now its a tiny joy of today learning journey

[@hanspetervollhorst1]

I am using MC since I switched from DOS/ Windows (using the Norton Commander NC) there. Really interested in seeing a full video. It is such a blizz.

[@rrr92462]

Very good and useful vid. Loaded and aliased exa and bat.

[@Endelin]

I prefer "lsd" over "exa", simliar color features but it also incorporates Nerdfonts symbols for filetypes.

[@umop3plsdn]

ya i came here to say the same thing. I used exa for years but now use lsd and get icons and all kinds of things its great

[@pedrokatuniz8936]

i wasn't aware of lsd, but exa is doing the same thing now if you use the --icons flag

[@umop3plsdn]

@@pedrokatuniz8936 i used exa for years but lsd is leagues better. def try it out

[@964tractorboy]

Always pick-up something useful, or am reminded of something else useful. I could get behind a video on mc for sure!

[@BachPhotography]

Awesome bunch of tools, I've been using Ubuntu professionally for over 10 years and still learned a lot here

[@wojciech-kulik]

Wow, huge amount of useful tips!

[@maurolimaok]

I really like this channel. Thanks for the useful tips.

[@WilliamDye-willdye]

I haven't used exa because grc does a good job of colorizing output from ls and other basic commands. Might be worth a look, tho. Thanks for the suggestion.

[@jankymaker9680]

Incredibly, more videos like this please

[@n.a.s1096]

This is great. Thank you.

[@techtipsuk]

I must type these commands 1000s of times each day how did I not know these exist. Thanks.

[@maxdzyubak]

Amazing! Thanks! Good luch!

[@andreasgerlach4963]

Thanks for the video! Although I only use relatively simple command line procedures I would like to watch a deeper tutorial about MC because this is used by many Webspace providers for managing files via SSH. It would be great to be able to use it maybe more efficient :)

[@G0USL]

Ive been using MC since the 90s! Another excellent legacy file manager was Xtree Gold. Thanks for some excellent pointers to useful programs.

[@tassaron]

I love mc so much. The built in text editor of mc is also pretty good (supports multiple files open at once) but it's a harder comparison against the sea of excellent text editors.

[@Xiriousful]

ncdu is definitely one that deserves to be on this list. Very very useful

[@tiagodejesus456]

Great video!

[@paulhammond8583]

Mint video this one, cheers!

[@nilsgg]

Would love to see more about mc

[@harijagarnauth]

This is awesome!

[@vitormelo22]

I didn't know about entr, is amazingo for fast test.

[@tech_craft]

I couldn’t live without entr - testing is my exact use case for it

[@jdmayfield88]

I LOVE MIDNIGHT COMMANDER! Been using it for almost 25 years! So handy. Also use it as my primary IDE. Very slim, simple, works through ssh, and really an amazing Swiss Army Knife of command-line utilities. Also, what caught my attention to watch this video. Thanks for the great content!

[@petergoodall6258]

Derived closely from Norton Commander which we were using in the late ‘80s

[@jacobtb1]

super helpful

[@GuilherHast]

Usually these videos about command line tools teach me nothing new. This one was very different

[@MkhanyisiMadlavana]

i first used mc (midnight commander) in 2005 at varsity. you can make the both panes be different computers over SSH (or FTP) and transfer files between two different computers (different from your computer). it also comes with a basic editor `mcedit` and its read-only viewer `mcview`. stopped using mc in 2010s and im surprised it is still an active project. gonna install it for old times sake, lol

[@stylesg7818]

Thank you so much.

[@joelpww]

Awesome video

[@jmileshc]

MC please. Interesting regarding the other utilities too. Thank you.

[@micleh]

I'd very much appreciate a video on mc. KZbin has no good videos, especially not by guys like you with perfect explaining and presentation skills. I've been using a dual pane file manager for the first time on dos way back, i.e. Norton Commander, and have been using mc from the first time when I started using Linux back in 2003. Thanks for these helpful videos.

[@tech_craft]

Thanks! I'm editing the mc tutorial at the moment - it should land this coming weekend.

[@brickviking667]

@@tech_craft glad to hear that - I've been using MC fairly regularly since about 1997/98, and it has been my go--to file manager during almost all that time. There are (of course) others such as workman, nautilus and dolphin, but mc runs under text mode and will run just about anywhere from MS-DOS to modern Unix-likes. I'd like to see an in-depth discussion of mc, not just the X for dummies level.

[@embeddedbastler6406]

I like how 4 of those 7 tools are written in Rust.

[@JohnWDisco]

MC is the best for when I am remotely changing backend files around on my servers. A new one started playing with is Monotty Desktopio. Pretty neat. It’s wotth checking out.

[@gerion1980]

This an excellent compilation of useful commands. And I see you are using org mode. Yay!

[@tech_craft]

Org mode is too good to abandon. I’m getting ever deeper on it.

[@gerion1980]

@@tech_craft I am torn between org and Obsidian. Two good choices. I am always amazed to see what you can do with org and what is marketed as “new” feature in many apps. This new outliner (bike? Bicycle?) is another example. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@gerion1980]

@@tech_craft By the way, an org mode video would be highly appreciated! Very interested to see and hear how you use it, and if you, by any chance, use it on mobile devices as well! 👋🙏

[@karim3741]

An actual good linux commands, loved it ❤🔥

[@martiananomaly]

Your terminal is really sleek and neat.

[@tech_craft]

It's Kitty terminal with the Dracula theme.

[@vrajshah8075]

Hey Tech Craft. Love the videos. I just wanted to know how i can get my terminal to look like yours. I really like it. Thanks!

[@tech_craft]

Thanks! There are a few parts to it. I'm using Kitty terminal emulator with the Dracula theme. I'm also using Tmux with the same theme. I have a video on that last part: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eF6UqHqtq7qqo5o

[@amj864]

More of these please :D

[@tylerljohnson]

great suggestions! btw, seems like recently *bat* as been renamed to *batcat* on debian.

[@rafaeldietrich8050]

Amazin video! Do you use emacs org mode? Whats your note taking setup?

[@tech_craft]

I do use org mode. For note taking I use org-roam and I have everything synchronised between my machines with Syncthing.

[@neuroArgento]

great & handy info in a simple format!, thanks! by the way, what OS did you use in your video?

[@tech_craft]

It's MacOS using the Kitty terminal emulator.

[@jxon]

would highly recommend checking out colorls if you haven't already, similar to exa

[@k-c]

This was useful.

[@DanKardell]

Aweome tools! BTW. what do you use for your terminal prompt?

[@tech_craft]

I'm using Starship: starship.rs/

[@Jarek.]

Pet! Love it for snippets, 'pet search' or 'pet exec'

[@saxtant]

Of course ls can do colour too. The tree function is nice, makes exa a little better than du -a

[@laughingvampire7555]

exa and lsd are both great replacements for standard ls. cat is misunderstood, is not meant for printing files to the terminal is meant to be used in pair with `split` and redirections

[@NathanielHarari]

I just wanted to thank you for your channel (which I’ve only come across a few days ago). Thanks to you, I upgraded my Raspberry Pi 400 to Bullseye, I actually subscribed to Blink plan (it was amazing..I never knew about it before), and I learned even more about Tmux. That’s just in the last few days. I used to use EMacs all the time but I stopped a while back since Notes and the apple OS stuff integrates so nicely and does most of what I need. But now, I just reinstalled Doom on my Raspberry Pi and I’m wondering about your emacs setup using Blink. Could you please make a video about that? Thanks again for the amazing info! 👍

[@NathanielHarari]

Oh and to top it off, I also installed VS Code on my Pi and access it with Blink. Amazing.

[@tech_craft]

I’m working on building my own ‘ecosystem’ so I’m not dependent on Apple, Google or any single big tech vendor. I want to control my data and Emacs is a big part of making that practical.

[@NathanielHarari]

@@tech_craft Yeah I agree with you and that’s part of why I started learning emacs and loving it. But, in fact, I learned that (for me), Apple does most of what I want emacs to do and my data is all backed up to my raspberry pi as well as in iCloud. And transferring the content of notes is actually pretty easy - it’s not something like a Word document. However, your video made me realize how much I miss tinkering with and using emacs in org mode especially and how amazing and useful it is. So I’d love to see a video dedicated to emacs on your pi and how you use it in conjunction with blink and your ipad because, honestly, I’d like to try the same. I just reinstalled Doom last night on my pi in expectation of me trying something like that. 😃

[@thanhdang3453]

Thank you for sharing those cool cli. Could you please share me your theme that you're using as well?

[@tech_craft]

Sure thing. It's Dracula: draculatheme.com/

[@aydnbilgin1627]

TNice tutorials was easy to follow.

[@crispgm]

There are several inotify libs in various languages. I didn't know ENTR before, so I made one by myself.

[@arthuradriaens6622]

I think, for people used to vim shortcuts, that lf (terminal file manager) seems to be a more intuitive alternative to Midnight Commander

[@hipnodude1]

Great video! Slight correction when you were talking about z -. The dash is actually shell thing not a zoxide thing. Its a common way for commands to reference "last". So cd - works as well. Funny enough it also works in git! So git checkout - will actually checkout the previous branch you were on as well. Or git merge - will merge your previously checked out branch into your current one! Not trying to nitpick, just love sharing knowledge on this stuff! :)

[@ivanjermakov]

I recommend checking out ranger and vifm as a vim-like mc alternative

[@gimcrack555]

I use ranger. I set it up prefect for my workflow. mc is great as well. I also like nnn and vifm is also great. We power Linux users, stick what we know and like. I got familiar with ranger so I stuck with ranger. I also use micro as my text editor. I don't need all those bells and whistles that vim and emac has. micro to me is like nano on steroids.

[@pablomza]

what font do you use on your terminal? great video

[@tech_craft]

Thanks! It’s JetBrains Mono

[@pavelperina7629]

Good. I'd like to see something about script, tmux, screen ... i found script somewhat useful for session recording and I recall using tmux or screen in 90s (hell, i'm old) for keeping opened terminal session when connection dies

[@azufendusgarendum6583]

I'd also like to see a full video on MC 😲

[@IdoSamuelson]

i'll recommend LSD vs exa (via cargo/Rust), btop, gitui, mcfly(cargo/Rust), Dust(cargo/Rust) and the main one topgrade (cargo/Rust)

[@kragrrr]

Eagerly waiting for your Ubuntu video!

[@tech_craft]

I’ve been having a real nightmare getting Ubuntu Desktop and the USB-C connection to play nicely together. Ubuntu Server works really well since it uses netplan for managing the network interfaces. Sadly something about NetworkManager in Desktop seems to not want to manage the usb connection properly!

[@kragrrr]

@@tech_craft No problem, don't rush it 😀

[@kragrrr]

@@tech_craft By the way, isn't the Antenna of the Raspberry Pi working over USB-C rather than using network of the iPad?

[@user-ig9hf1so2p]

Grt vid

[@thomasblackwell9507]

MC is definitely 👍

[@jyvben1520]

i use mc/mcedit daily, just discovered the option this week to open mc with 2 given folders, used when working without gui on rpi , mount usb drive sdb1 to /mnt, run mc ./ /mnt/afolder , ready to copy newer files after quick compare (control+x d q) + F5 to copy The editor can open multiple files and export/import files or clips. run mc -e afile ... or mcedit afile ...

[@anmolsharma4049]

Hey, how did you enable command history using fzf?

[@truefirstmagic]

Surprised you didn’t mention the benefits of ripgrep (rg) over stock grep. Besides the more readable output, and the fact that it can detect when you’re running the output through a pipe so it can keep that output clean, there’s the SPEEEEEED. For any search involving multiple files/recursive directory structures, it absolutely wrecks grep.

[@tech_craft]

I wanted to keep this one under 10 minutes so had to cut quite a lot from my original script. The speed boost is real though!

[@dmferrari]

Hi Rob! What's the theme you are using in this video? Thanks! :)

[@tech_craft]

It's Dracula: draculatheme.com/

[@lal102]

What terminal application are you using? Thanks for the video.

[@tech_craft]

It's Blink Shell on the iPad with few customisations on the host. I have a full video on that setup here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bn3GhXRropuSqtU

[@mort_brain]

What is the "OPT" key you always refer to?

[@homfes]

vifm and ranger are also great terminal file managers.

[@tech_craft]

I’ve been trying ranger on and off for the last few weeks. Seems really nice.

[@gimcrack555]

@@tech_craft ranger is very nice. After you setup a few things to make it more useful. But nothing wrong with your choice of mc. It's hard to crack someone to another app. When the app they are using is just as awesome as what other's had suggested.

[@DaniIhzaFarrosi]

Another suggestion, turn on your Vim syntax highlighting :)