Which Linux tool or command is surprisingly simple, powerful, and yet underrated?"

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.

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nano was and still is vital to me learning and using linux, I will not learn how to use vim so if the distro forces it to be default im not using it.

Why is editing text so convoluted for seemingly no reason.. also hate that vim must be used for certain files.
- You can change your hate to love by using vim
  
  one of my favorite linux youtubers is named vimjoyer so maybe one day I will try to learn it
  
  It's totally worth it. But be aware that you might get some :w sprinkled over your documents you are forced to write in other editors or word processors which does not speak vim...
  
  I've liked helix a bit more. It takes less initial set up, and generally has the mentality of showing what you're about to change before inputting a change command.
  
  I use vim mode everywhere I can and vim in the console, it took a bit of effort to learn but it was fun and satisfying. Highly recommend, I'm a vim user now for 7 years.
- You can change that by changing your editor global variable
- Wow you triggered a lot of vim users !
  
  Maybe give micro a shot :) It's nano but more sane defaults and comes with customization in mind.
- It's for people to memorize hundreds of arcane shortcuts and shit so they can feel like a smug hacker and gloat over the rest of us using other editors and getting just as much done as they are.
  
  Also for graybeards that haven't realized it's not 1985 anymore.
  
  For the average user you're definitely right, but I will say for the sysadmin of headless systems, having a powerful cli editor is a godsend. While it may seem arcane and unnecessary, learning vim is easier than managing remote x or sshfs or copying files to and from a system.
  
  I didn't learn vim to be a contrarian; I learned it because it seemed (and still seems to be) the path of least resistance for many workflows.
  
  I learned vi so I would not have to use ed or emacs!
  
  Wait until you meet an emacs user! ;p
  
  It's for people that don't want a big bulky IDE and are willing to put a little work in to get used to it. I do all my coding in the terminal with vim and tmux and I like the simplicity and that with two dotfiles I can migrate my whole development environment to whatever PC, server or RaspberryPi that I need.
  
  I've used Vim for some pretty non-nerdy stuff. Like ripping my DVD collection, when I got to the TV section I had a lot of file names to modify in bulk, and Vim let me do that. Also guitar tablature, the ability to edit plaintext both horizontally and vertically is surprisingly handy. Just having a macro to be able to add a bar line saves a shocking amount of time.
  
  It was mostly a joke. I was just trying to mess with people 😉
  
  Which I'll use as a lighthearted excuse to mention things like the block edit mode.
- vim isn't required for any files, you just followed online tutorials for how to edit those files instead of RTFM
  
  terminal text editing is convoluted because it has to strike a balance between figuring out when a keypress is part of the text you're typing, vs when it's a command you're using, and making sure that all the editor commands the designer wanted are accessible.
  
  vim is great because it allows for thousands more editing commands and macros, and much more customization of the editor, up to allowing plugins that emulate other functionality. As it stands, my setup basically functions as a full, lightweight-ish, multi-language IDE that rivals Emacs or Visual Studio.
  
  On top of all that, I don't have to move my hands away from the homerow of keys to navigate or edit, which may not seem like much, but adds up to a lot of avoid typos and time saved from moving my hands to reach the arrows/delete/home/end/pgup/pgdn.
  
  Some examples:
  
  h, j,k,l move left, down, up, and right respectively, but they can be combined with a number to move that many rows or columns; e.g. 6j will move down 6 rows
  
  dd deletes a line, but using a number + d + a movement will delete that many characters/lines in the path of the cursor: e.g. 34dl will delete 34 characters to the right of the cursor, 12dk will delete 12 lines up.
  
  gg will take you to the first line, G will take you to the last, and number + either will take you to that line: e.g. 3275gg or 3275G will take you to line 3275
  
  and finally you can use /text or regex pattern you want to search for and Enter to search the document for the first occurence below your current location, and then use n to search for the next occurence, or N to search for the previous
  
  That doesn't even scratch the surface (that's just the cheatsheet, which only scratches the surface), but if you can get a handle on only what I've said, and switching between input and command mode (i and Esc respectively), the speedup to navigation alone will make it seem more sensible.
  
  And as always, don't forget to :wq (write to file and quit)
- seems like you need to try micro. It's like nano, but with more sensible standard keybinds imho, as well as syntax highlighting and global clipboard use.
- Yeah, to this day vim still isn't intuitive for me, so I just use nano as it's either often included or simple to install on most Distros.
  
  Unless a script is hardcoded for vim I haven't had to use it.
  
  It's weird but VIM is so powerful and I love it but i also agree it wouldn't be the default just an option if you needed it. It's like with notepad ++ on windows it's wonderful but not everyone needs it from day one notepad will work just fine for basic typing.
- vim must be used for certain files??
  
  Cant remember exactly but it had something to do with a file relating to sudo and it only was allowed to be edited with a vim style editor.
  
  The EDITOR or VISUAL environment variables are usually read by command line tools to launch your preferred editor. You could set VISUAL to nano before launching visudo and you would be editing the sudoers file in nano.
  
  There's a separate command called visudo for this purpose.
  
  You CAN use any ol' text editor but visudo has built-in validation specific to the sudoers file. This is helpful because sudoers syntax is unique and arcane, and errors are potentially quite harmful.
  
  But visudo can use any editor if you set SUDO_EDITOR or EDITOR variables. If you don't want to use vi(m) you should probably set EDITOR in your .bashrc and visudo and probably other programs will use your editor of choice.
  
  visudo?
  
  There may be certain times where it's all that's available, I think I remember having to edit fstab in some recovery state in vi
  
  /etc/sudoers?
  
  you can just edit that with nano or whatever, the visudo thing they tell you to use is goofy and I don't like it
- igtfo<ESC>
  :q!
- I used nano when I started but now I am using vim for one year already. I'd recommend taking a few days where you only use vim and I think you will see why people like it. With a few motions you can be much faster than you would be in Nano.
  
  One of the big reasons I switched to nixos is that I mostly need to use the console only for updating my system by editing the configuration file using nano. I do very little besides that thankfully while the GUI side of linux gets better everyday.
  
  I’m using Linux since 1998 and still like nano. I can use vi, but prefer nano when it’s available.
- Nano is hella confusing too. Since when is ^ = Ctrl?
  
  And why dont they tell you that Ctrl+S Ctrl+C Ctrl+X works?
  
  ^C has been notation for ctrl-c for decades.
  
  I grew up with the ^ symbol meaning CTRL. Kids these days.
  
  Since 1968
  
  As for why: arbitrary choice, they just needed a printable character they could show on screen, for when people pressed it and the terminal echoed it back out to them.
  
  Yes but I am not that old and never saw it anywhere. So while it makes as much sense as hjkl it is not beginner friendly.

323 comments