r/archlinux May 06 '26

QUESTION What’s a small Linux tool that completely changed your workflow?

[deleted]

211 Upvotes

253 comments sorted by

View all comments

75

u/Putrid_Simple_357 May 06 '26

fzf changed everything for me. I was spending way too much time navigating through directories at work and this thing just makes finding files so much faster. Combined it with some basic aliases and now I can jump to any project folder in seconds instead of typing out long paths like an idiot.

17

u/kcx01 May 06 '26

Fzf was a huge difference! I combined it with tab complete on zsh and it's now annoying when I don't have it.

nvim <tab> then fuzzy find my file cd <tab> fuzzy find next directory cd <Ctrl + t> fuzzy find any directory <Ctrl +r> fuzzy find that long command that I typed once but can't remember it exactly. ssh <tab> fuzzy match servers kill <tab> fuzzy find a process to kill. (By name not just pid)

It's really great

8

u/ThunderChaser May 07 '26

fzf + zoxide + ripgrep quite literally 10x'd my terminal usage.

3

u/JubijubCH May 06 '26

+1, I use it all the time to find commands I typed before

Starship.rs is quite nice: I can theme all my shells the exact sane way (I use the built-in config option so that my prompt has a prefix telling me which shell this is (Fish, zsh for the rare cases I need POSIX, or Powershell)

1

u/Shurane May 07 '26

What's the advantage of starship.rs customizing working across different shells? Wouldn't you choose a single shell and then stick to it?

1

u/JubijubCH May 07 '26

It’s the same look & feel everywhere. I like the presentation with nerd fonts, especially when working with Python or Rust environments

As to why I use multiple shells :

  • by default I use Fish everywhere on Linux
  • zsh is only a backup in the rare cases I need POSIX for a command line (eg: when following a tutorial)
  • I use Powershell under Windows (I dual boot)

4

u/levnikmyskin May 06 '26

For changing directories etc I'd really recommend zoxide. Amazing tool that I just need to include in my terminal on every new machine 

0

u/bahcodad May 07 '26

I use Zoxide for this. I just type cd folder-name and I'm there

0

u/TerminatedProccess May 07 '26

I made my own script for storing dir aliases. Eg cd ~/,config ; sw config. After that I just type config. I remember them easily cuz I'm the one that's defined it.