Sugar on Top of the Fundamentals

You’ve got the basics (Part 1) and the stream-and-pipe model (Part 2). Everything from here is optional — quality-of-life tools that make the terminal faster and friendlier. None of it replaces what you’ve learned; it sits on top of it. The plain commands are always there on any machine, and that matters when you’re on a stripped-down server. Treat this chapter as a buffet: install what appeals, skip what doesn’t.

The tools come in two families:

  • Better versions of what you know — drop-in upgrades to ls, cat, find, grep, and cd.
  • Never memorize a flag again — lookups that hand you the example you need instead of a 40-page manual.

NOTE: The originals still matter. Learn these as conveniences, not crutches. When you SSH into a fresh box, ls, cat, grep, and man are there; eza and bat are not. Knowing the plain tools is the skill — these just make your daily machine nicer.

Installing Them

Most live in the standard repositories. On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ripgrep bat fd-find fzf

Newer tools (eza, zoxide, tealdeer) may need a recent distro or Rust’s cargo install; each project’s README has the current method. On macOS, brew install covers all of them.

WARNING: The Debian renaming trap. To avoid name clashes, Debian/Ubuntu ship two of these under different command names: bat runs as batcat, and fd runs as fdfind. If bat “isn’t found” right after installing, that’s why. Make a friendly alias once:

mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
ln -s $(which batcat) ~/.local/bin/bat
ln -s $(which fdfind) ~/.local/bin/fd
# ensure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH (most distros already do this)

Better Versions of What You Know

eza — a better ls

Colored, git-aware listings, and a real tree view without the separate tree tool.

eza -la           # like ls -la, but readable and colored
eza --tree        # show the directory as a tree
eza -la --git     # add a column showing git status per file

bat — a better cat

cat with syntax highlighting and line numbers. When you pipe it somewhere, it quietly behaves like plain cat, so it won’t break your pipelines.

bat config.yml          # view a file with highlighting + line numbers
bat -pp config.yml      # plain (no decorations) - good for copy/paste

fd — a better find

The same job as find, with sane defaults and a syntax you can actually remember.

fd report               # find files/dirs matching "report"
fd -e md                # only .md files
fd -H secret            # include hidden files in the search

ripgrep (rg) — a better grep

Searches file contents recursively, fast, and skips junk in .gitignore by default.

rg "TODO"               # find "TODO" in every file under here
rg -n "api_key"         # -n shows line numbers
rg -i "error"           # -i = case-insensitive

zoxide — a smarter cd

It remembers the directories you visit and lets you jump by a fragment of the name — no more long chains of cd ... It needs one line in your shell config to hook in:

# add to ~/.bashrc (or ~/.zshrc), then open a new terminal:
eval "$(zoxide init bash)"

# afterwards, anywhere:
z school        # jump to the dir you visit most that matches "school"
zi school       # pick interactively if there are several

fzf — the fuzzy finder

A general-purpose “type a few letters, pick from a live-filtered list” tool. Its best trick is upgrading your shell’s history search: press Ctrl+R and fuzzy-find any command you’ve ever run.

# pipe anything into fzf to pick interactively:
fd -e md | fzf          # fuzzy-pick a markdown file
nano "$(fd -e conf | fzf)"   # find a config, pick it, open it

# after enabling fzf's shell keybindings:
#   Ctrl+R  - fuzzy search command history
#   Ctrl+T  - fuzzy-pick a file into the current command

NOTE: fzf keybindings need enabling. The Ctrl+R/Ctrl+T widgets come from fzf’s shell integration. On recent versions add eval "$(fzf --bash)" to ~/.bashrc; on Debian you can instead source /usr/share/doc/fzf/examples/key-bindings.bash. Until then, fzf still works as a pipe target — you just don’t get the hotkeys.

Never Memorize a Flag Again

You learned the right way to get help in Part 1: man and --help. These three are the fast way — reach for them once you understand what a command does and just need the incantation.

tldr — example-first help

Where man tar is a wall of text, tldr tar is the five commands you actually use. Community-maintained, example-driven.

tldr tar          # the common tar invocations, with examples
tldr --update     # refresh the local page cache (tealdeer)

cheat.sh — cheat sheets over curl

Nothing to install — if you have curl, you have it. Great on a bare server.

curl cht.sh/tar           # a concise tar cheat sheet
curl cht.sh/find/delete   # answers to a specific question

navi — interactive cheat sheets

A browsable, runnable cheat-sheet launcher: pick a command from a fuzzy list and navi fills in the blanks before running it.

navi              # browse and run from interactive cheat sheets

Practice (Pick Two, Try Them)

No capstone here — just install a couple and feel the difference on a throwaway folder.

mkdir cli3-reps && cd cli3-reps
printf 'TODO: ship it\nall good\nTODO: write tests\n' > notes.txt
rg -n TODO notes.txt          # find both TODO lines, with line numbers
bat notes.txt                 # view it highlighted (or: batcat notes.txt)
eza -la                       # a nicer listing of this folder
tldr rg                       # see ripgrep's own common examples
cd .. && rm -rf cli3-reps     # clean up

SUCCESS: That’s the whole idea. These tools don’t change what you do — they make the doing quicker and the looking-up painless. Add them one at a time as you feel the need; there’s no prize for installing all nine at once. The fundamentals from Parts 1 and 2 are the real skill — this is just a sharper set of knives.

You’ve finished the Command Line track. New here? Begin at Part 1 — The Command Line, From Zero. For more guides on self-hosting, privacy, local AI, and digital sovereignty: cypherpunkschool.com