LinuxQuestions.org - Giving Thanks for Linux

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Giving Thanks for Linux

I've been thinking for a while about I am really grateful for with Gnu/Linux. It's a topic that could fill tomes, but I was thinking of a sort of David Letterman 'top ten' type list except not funny.

I'm interested in what other people have to say. Especially if they could share some of the tools they think are 'must haves.'

In Gnu/Linux I really love:
1. | < > >> &>
input, output redirects. Redirects make so much Linux goodness possible , it's hard to imagine life without them.

2. sed, tr, and ed
Isn't it great to be able to make changes across thousands of lines with simple lightweight tools?

3. cat + grep
I really like being able to find what I'm looking for without loading a big bulky program and regular expressions just make it so much nicer.

4. GCC and Open source, repositories, subversion, git, etc.
It's nice to be able to get lots of programs for free and to be able to do whatever you want with them. It's also nice to see what's going on under the hood and season to preference.

5. bash, other shells, cron, and shell scripts
This is quite a big category and includes a lot from the others. I thought something meta like this should go at the end but it really goes nicely after the GCC. It's nice to be able to tell my computer what to do and when to do it without clicking through twenty screens of a GUI and not be disappointed at the end. An added bonus is being able to see what happened.

6. ffmpeg
An audio / video formatting converter tool that's command line driven, powerful and free.

7. wget and curl
Command line tools that are scriptable to get lots of stuff.

8. for i in *; do ...; done
Isn't something worth doing, worth doing ten thousand more times at the push of a button?

9. find, strace, pwd, whoami
Who am I? Where is that? What happened?

10. netstat -pat(u), host, nmap, Kismet, traceroute
I like to know who my computer is talking to.

The Next Ten:
11. wc -l
We use it a lot.

12. htop

13. Pingus

14. /proc

15. /var/log

16. growisofs

Here here.

3 cheers for linux!

I'll drink to that :-)

Favorite 10 Gnu/Linux programs 2009

This year I was really grateful for the following Gnu/Linux programs (certainly not only exclusive to 2009):
1. osd_cat -- I really like being able to send myself messages 'system alert' style (or have tcpdump output scroll by at the top of the screen).

Code:

 

        $ echo "This is important." | osd_cat --align=center --pos=middle --font=lucidasanstypewriter-bold-24

2. mtp-tools + libmtp8 -- This is a very helpful command line tool for working with an annoying protocol used by many mp3 players. 

        $mtp-detect

        $mtpfs ./mtp-dir

3.alsaconf + alsamixer + .asoundrc = I really appreciated how well alsa conf sets up sound. chrooted alsa sound worked much better for me than chrooted jack sound. I also liked being able to edit the alsa conf file .asoundrc to be able to capture all raw sound over the alsa card. http://tinyurl.com/y9m3hmw
4. apcupsd -- My last UPS died with no warning. I then bought an APC UPS. The monitoring daemon is FOSS and the script highly configurable. My ups can now send me updates via email.

5. imagemagick -- It is very useful for batch edits of pictures: trimming, converting, etc. It's also a quick way to whip up a text image.

Code:

        $ echo -e "Happy New Year"  | convert -size 960x -font Essays1743-Bold  -pointsize 24  -channel RGBA -background black -fill green1 -stroke green caption:@- -trim newyear.png

6. schroot - Schroot helps to easily chroot -- creating an environment to sandbox and safely run 32 bit applications.

7. rsync - I'm grateful that rsync is always there to keep my data backed up.

8. wget + for = Sometimes you want to download a webpage or file at the command line... and sometimes you want to download a lot of webpages or files.

Code:

 

        $for ((i=1; i<=773; i++)); do wget http://example.foopictures.org/vacation/[^ ]*\.\(JPG\|PNG\|BMP\)'`; done

9.nmap , zmapfe = nmap is a really useful tool for seeing what's going on in your network.

Code:

nmap -A -T4 127.0.0.1

Zenmap now makes nice topology pictures.

10. cat + sed + grep + (and regular expressions)= I probably use these three or any combination thereof more than I should. Check yourself (unless you've disabled your .bash_history:

Code:

$cat ~/.bash_history |grep -o '$sed \|cat \|grep $' |wc -l

Enjoy your New Year!

@OP

My main OS is GNU/Linux based. It's good and it does what I want.

However, as far as scripting goes, any cross compatible script language works just as well on windows for the above tasks mentioned. Not to mention a lot of the tools are also available on windows and are not necessarily part of a standard GNU/Linux distribution.

Additionally, you only said "Linux" but yet the only thing from the kernel you thanked was /proc. Everything else were GNU tools (or other projects like ffmpeg).

If my readings and facts are correct, GNU and Minix inspired Linux to be developed.

I know everybody probably already knows this but I said it regardless.

Anyway... We really should be thankful for a whole lot more.

True. However part of the challenge is putting things in a topical way to facilitate conversation. Memetically we've decided on 'top 10 lists' as a convention for initiating discussion. The initial thread was from last year. Regardless, it may have been titled Linux which may be incorrect, it is commonly used to represent the Linux kernel used in conjunction with the Gnu tools including tools made possible by the GCC. This did not come as a surprise. The site is titled 'Linux Questions'. (On a site note, my posting from this year refers to Gnu/Linux.
I abhor the business practices and the problems that the mind set proprietary software causes in our world. I could have elaborated on that; however, it did not seem topical. I was trying to find a topical way to elicit comments from others detailing interesting projects that they may have done in the last year. Specifically, I am interested in tools available in Gnu/Linux distributions. I do enjoy scripting languages; however, that was not the focus. I believe others reciprocating said interest may have tidbits of related knowledge they may like to communicate to one another. This seems the most likely forum for that.
Our designation of New Year is an arbitrary designation of the Earth's place in orbit. However, it helps us as a society find common ground. (Though we do alienate many of those from cultures celebrating Lunar New Years.)

Enjoy your New Year!

I'll vote for these ( not all Linux, but close enough ;) ):

1) ps
2) top/topas
3) vi/vim
4) head
5) tail
6) &
7) ln
8) du
9) POSIX
10) clang