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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

Broadly, is anyone aware of a generalized list of "new versions of classic tools?"

There are so many now that are better than the old stuff; I almost feel like a unified round up of these, maybe even in a distro form, might be good for linux enthusiasts, newcomers, old-timers, etc.

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Zellij instead of tmux (not necessarily better, but it's easier to use)

Xonsh instead of bash (because you already know Python, why learn a new horrible language?)

bat instead of cat (syntax highlights and other nice things)

exa instead of ls (just nicer)

neovim instead of vim (just better)

helix instead of neovim (just tested it, seems promising though)

nix instead of your normal package manager (it works on Mac, and essentially every Linux dist. And it's got superpowers with devshells and home-manager to bring your configuration with you everywhere)

rmtrash instead of rm (because you haven't configured btrfs snapshots yet)

starship instead of your current prompt (is fast and displays a lot of useful information in a compact way, very customizable)

mcfly instead of your current ctrl+r (search history in a nice ncurses tui)

dogdns instead of dig (nicer colors, doesn't display useless information)

amp, kakoune (more alternative text editors)

ripgrep instead of grep (it's just better yo)

htop instead of top (displays stuff nicer)

gitui/lazygit instead of git cli (at least for staging, nice with file, hunk and line staging when you have ADHD)

gron + ripgrep instead of jq when searching through JSON in the shell (so much easier)

keychain instead of ssh-agent (better cli imo)

Wrote this on the train with my phone by checking https://github.com/Lillecarl/nixos/blob/master/common/defaul... for which packages I have installed myself :)

Tig also belongs in this list. An ncurses git repository browser that I use all the time.

ranger and vifm instead of midnight commander (vim key bindings)

lsd instead of exa (better formatting, icons)

mosh instead of ssh for interactive sessions (maintains session even with bad connectivity)

hyprland instead of sway instead of i3 instead of XMonad

btop instead of htop instead of top

An annoying thing about btop is that it only uses the snap package manager and nothing else. You can still install it yourself easily but I don’t understand why they’d stick stick with snap alone.

>that it only uses the snap package manager and nothing else

The first installation method it shows for Linux systems is download a statically compiled binary and it already exists on the repos of every major distro. Where the only uses snap comes from?

https://github.com/aristocratos/btop#installation

htop has much better support for more obscure unices, fwiw. Supports every BSD, whatever Solaris is called these days.

Btop seems to only support Macos, Linux and FreeBSD.

nushell instead of Xonsh/bash/fish. A bit of a learning curve but worth it Also tig as a git ui

> Xonsh instead of bash (because you already know Python, why learn a new horrible language?)

Exactly, one horrible language is enough!

tuc instead of cut (cut text better than `cut`, or lines like head/tails - eg cut first and last line at once) (but I'm biased, I'm the author)

https://github.com/riquito/tuc/

I'm big fan of using micro[1] instead of nano/vim as the default command line text editor.

[1] https://micro-editor.github.io/

fd instead of find (fast, good defaults) https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

One thing that comes to mind as someone who is not in the know of these new tools would be, are they safe?

The old tools have been there forever and used everywhere. My assumption would be these are safe and don't change often. For better or for worse, I would be concerned about using the newer tools unless they are backed and/or approved by a large open source org.

If the tool is "$x, but with pretty colors", there's a good chance they are not safe to use in pipelines. It's distressingly common for colored output to be sent even when piped.

I really respect this take -- and also kind of don't like it at the same time?

Basically, I don't do "mission critical" Linux things. I teach IT and I hack around on my own boxes with scripts and stuff because it's fun and useful to me. I'm always on the lookout for the hooks and such that can get more and different people into Linux.

I understand. The truth can be bitter. My first instinct is to install most of these tools. Then I remember all the recent supply chain attacks and malicious packages that have been snuck into software.

I use 1 daily driver for everything, including my finances and crypto. So trust me, I'm bummed out about this. I'll still check some of these out. As long as they seem safe, I will install a few.

> My assumption would be these are safe and don't change often.

Go take a trip through the GNU userland tools and you'll find a lot of dodgy code that hasn't been touched in 30+ years.

https://github.com/ibraheemdev/modern-unix

> A collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common unix commands.

If you are just looking for the largest files in a directory hierarchy, try this:

  find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 ls -s | sort -n

If your find/xargs don't support null delimiters, then the guy who wrote musl has some tricks:

http://www.etalabs.net/sh_tricks.html

What came to my mind is a blog post[0] by Julia Evans

Not exactly what you had in mind but might still be interesting.

[0] https://jvns.ca/blog/2022/04/12/a-list-of-new-ish--command-l...

> generalized list of "new versions of classic tools?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19967138

I like iotop. Pretty much exactly what it sounds like - a top-like program for I/O operations. It's also just an apt/yum/dnf install away on most distros.

htop also includes columns for read/write.

There's also more detailed CPU usage you can turn on, including I/O wait.

Use it, it's great.

bpytop, ncmpcpp

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