A little collection of cool unix terminal/console/curses tools

from:http://kkovacs.eu/cool-but-obscure-unix-toolsJust a list of 20 (now 28) tools for the command line. Some are little-known, some are just too useful to miss, some are pure obscure -- I hope you find something useful that you weren't aware of yet! Use your operating system's package manager to install most of them. (Thanks for the tips, everybody!)

dstat & sar

iostat, vmstat, ifstat and much more in one.

 

slurm

Visualizes network interface traffic over time.

 

vim & emacs

The real programmers' editors.

 

screen, dtach, tmux, byobu

Keep your terminal sessions alive.

 

multitail

See your log files in separate windows.

 

tpp

Presentation ("PowerPoint") tool for terminal.

 

xargs & parallel

Executes tasks from input (even multithread).

 

duplicity & rsyncrypto

Encrypting backup tools.

 

nethack & slash'em

Still the most complex game on the planet.

 

lftp

Does FTPS. Can mirror, kinda like rsync.

 

ack

A better grep for source code.

 

calcurse & remind + wyrd

Calendar systems.

 

newsbeuter & rsstail

Command line RSS readers.

 

powertop

Helps conserve power on Linux.

 

htop & iotop

Process, memory and io monitoring.

 

ttyrec & ipbt

Record and play back terminal sessions.

 

rsync

Keeps filesystems in sync over SSH.

 

mtr

traceroute 2.0.

 

socat & netpipes

Directing stuff easily in and out of sockets.

 

iftop & iptraf

To see where your traffic goes.

 

siege & tsung

Command line load test tools.

 

ledger

Terminal-based accounting package.

 

taskwarrior

Todo management in the terminal.

 

curl

Everybody's favorite HTTP toolbox.

 

rtorrent & aria2

Command line torrent downloaders.

 

ttytter & earthquake

Nice trendy Twitter clients :)

 

vifm & ranger

Alternatives to the midnight commander.

 

cowsay & sl

I just couldn't resist. :o)

 

Discussion of this post on Hacker News - that's the place to get into nice old-school FidoNet-style flame wars about the important things in life, like whether or not tmux is better than screen, is parallel better than xargs, whether or not ifconfig is a power tool, or should this list include somebody's once-used tool for converting old Pascal code to C or something. :o)