lazygit: The Git Operations Nobody Memorises
A terminal interface over git that makes staging individual lines, interactive rebasing and stash juggling take seconds. What it is good at, and why you should not learn git through…
procs vs ps: Finding a Process Without a Pipeline
procs searches by name, shows which ports a process is listening on, and prints a readable tree. Where it helps, and why ps is still what every script and every…
HTTPie vs curl: Talking to APIs Without the Flags
HTTPie sends JSON by default and prints readable, coloured responses. The syntax translated, where curl remains the only sensible choice, and the faster reimplementation worth knowing about.
rclone: rsync for Cloud Storage
One tool that speaks S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, SFTP and dozens more. Copy versus sync, the client-side encryption layer, and the command that deletes files at the other end.
Text Encodings and Locales: Why the Same Command Gives Different Answers
Linux stores text as bytes and records nothing about what they mean. What UTF-8 actually is, what the LC_ variables change, and why a script that works on your laptop…
What a TLS Certificate Actually Proves
A certificate binds a name to a key and nothing more. The chain of trust, where your machine keeps its root store, and why a site can work in a…
How a Name Is Actually Resolved on a Linux Box
Between your program and a DNS server sit nsswitch, the resolver library, and usually a local stub listener. Why dig can succeed while your application fails, and how to tell…
What a Terminal Actually Is: TTYs, PTYs and Job Control
The window is not the terminal, and the terminal is not the shell. What sits between your keystrokes and a program, why Ctrl+C stops one thing and not another, and…
sort, uniq, cut and the Rest of the Text Toolkit
The small commands that turn a log file into an answer. The count-and-rank pipeline, why uniq needs sorted input, when cut is the wrong tool, and the ones you forget…
Compression — gzip, zstd, xz and bzip2
Four tools for one job, and the choice matters. Which to use when, the flag that stops them deleting your original, using every CPU core, and how they hook into…