1. lazydocker: terminal based docker management
2. ncdu: disk usage analyzer
3. nmtui: terminal based network management
4. browsh: terminal based web browser with headless Firefox backend

My list is a bit software developer-centric, but can be useful for development-adjacent tasks too.

• The Github CLI - great for doing routine GH work, like opening PRs or filing issues.
• glab - ditto for Gitlab.
• jq - JSON parsing, formatting, searching and modification.
• pup - like jq, but for HTML pages.
• sed - A powerful text find-and-replace tool with regular expressions.
• scp - File transfers over SSH.
• xargs - run a command for every line of output from another command. Great for automating manual tasks.
• curl - make any type of HTTP (and many other protocols) request from the command line.
• tar - compress/uncompress archive files.
• pwgen - generate passwords with lots of options.
• uuidgen - generate universally unique ids.
• exiftool - read and modify image/video/audio file metadata. Good for adding/editing tags/albums/dates/etc.

nvtop : visualize nvidia GPU usage and memory

top : monitor/manage processes although ps aux | grep appName is still my goto.

pyenv : easily install and use any python version

ipython : a customizable python interpreter. I have figured out many poorly modules using ipython and great for exploring modules.

Import psutil as ps

ps.#then hit tab

after hitting tab will show all attributes related to your imported module, use arrow keys to select methods == profit!

nethogs : monitor network connections by app.

firejail : app sandboxing

Ripgrep (rg) instead of grep or ack. Stupid fast.

yt-dlp since I don’t see it mentioned.

Drop tmux and use zellij (if you are scared of tmux, zellij is easier to learn IMO).

Git: lazygit
Docker management : lazydocker

Well, seeing them in the list like that rubs me the wrong way. 😅

Both of those come with a CLI, called git and docker respectively, which is the official way of using them. These CLIs might not be particularly sexy, depending on who you ask, but they’re decent enough and worth learning, even if you go the lazy* route, since online resources all just explain the official CLIs and you might find yourself one day administering remote systems where you can’t install additional software…

things i use:

• gitui . terminal UI for git (like lazygit)

• helix . modal text editor similar to vim, but with less configuration required

• eza . basically ls but with some more features

I rely on cli tools for a lot of things too. Here’s a list:

tmux: terminal multiplexer
zsh (with fzf zsh completion): shell
fzf: fuzzy finder
doas: sudo replacement
bat: cat replacement
fd: find replacement
advcpmv: cp/mv replacement
eza: ls replacement
zenith: htop replacement
trash-cli: trash management
neomutt: email client
neovim (and plugins): text/code editor
buku: internet bookmarks manager
tut: mastodon client
ucollage: image viewer
udevil: (un)mounting removable devices and networks without a password
magic-tape: youtube search/download and more
rofi: used with scripts to do a lot of things
pass: password manager
yazi: file explorer
iwd: wireless manager
ikhal: calendar and webdav sync with vdirsyncer
taskjuggler: complete task manager
newsboat: feed aggregator
fwupd: firmware updater
chawan: web browser
ncmpcpp: mpd-client

I have some of them detailed here.
This GitHub also has a long list.

zoxide. It’s cd but better. It remembers which directories you’ve navigated to, and fuzzy finds them.

So instead of typing:

cd /really/long/path/to/sime/dir

You can type:

zoxide dir

And it’ll take you right to the directory.

I’ve got it aliased to zd so I type:

zd dir

And I’m there.

Unpopular opinion maybe: many of the suggestions here are not worth the time.

Buy I’ll add one to the mix: yt-dlp I use a lot to download YouTube videos. Very robust.

I’m a big fan of jq. It’s a domain-specific language for manipulating JSON data.

ImageMagick is like ffmpeg but for images.

inotify-tools has command-line utilities that can be used in a Bash script or a Bash one-liner to make arbitrary things “happen” when something “happens” to a file or directory. (Then the file is opened or written to or renamed or whatever.)

I probably should mention rsync. It’s like a swiss army knife for copying files from one place to another. And it supports “keeping files syncronized” between two locations.

Of course, there’s tons of stuff that you pretty much can’t talk about Bash scripting without mentioning. Sed, awk, grep, find, etc.

Also, I totally relate about the terminal giving more dopamine. I kinda just hate going on a point-and-click adventure to do things like image editing or whatever. To the point that I’ve written a whole-ass domain-specific-language to do what I want rather than use Gimp. (And I’m working on another whole-ass domain-specific-language to do a traditionally-GUI-app sort of task.)

pdftk is fantastic for merging and splitting pdfs (among other things)