All commands (14,187)

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Share Your Commands


Check These Out

Selecting a random file/folder of a folder
Also looks in subfolders

Cap apt-get download speed
apt-get is pretty aggressive when it downloads, potentially hogging the bandwidth of your network. The 25 is in KB, change this to your needs.

Colorize grep output

Live stream a remote audio device over ssh using only ffmpeg
Change parameter 'plughw:0,0' in accordance with your audio device. To learn 'plughw' option, type the command aplay -l.

Advanced python tracing
Trace python statement execution and syscalls invoked during that simultaneously

Count lines of source code excluding blank lines and comments
Much more accurate than other methods mentioned here straight out of the box.

HOME USE ONLY: Get rid of annoying Polkit password prompts
Although the need to type a password to make certain changes to the system may make perfect sense in a business or educational environment, it makes absolutely zero sense to the home user. So, if you’re at home and would rather get work done than be annoyed by what is essentially Linux’s UAC, then this command is for you.

Save xkcd to a pdf with captions
Saves to a PDF with title and alt text of comic. As asked for on http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=91100 Change xkcd.com to dynamic.xkcd.com/comics/random for a random comic.

Press a key automatically
Press a key automatically via xvkbd.

When was your OS installed?
shows also time if its the same year or shows year if installed before actual year and also works if /etc is a link (mac os)


Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for: