Boost Your Linux Productivity with 8 Essential Command‑Line Tools

rsync

rsync is ideal for incremental backups and selective copying because it only transfers changed files. It also supports compression, bandwidth limiting, and exclusion patterns.

scp -Crvp -l 1024 logs/ root@remoteServer:/opt/logs

Typical rsync usage:

rsync -prz --exclude 'bin' --bwlimit=1024 logs/ root@remoteServer:/opt/logs

Options: -r recursive, -p preserve attributes, -z compress, --bwlimit limit bandwidth, --exclude skip files, --progress show progress.

screen & tmux

Both tools let you keep sessions alive after disconnecting from a remote host. screen is often pre‑installed; tmux offers more features but may require installation.

# 1 Start a screen session and run a command
screen vim /etc/hosts
# 2 Detach (Ctrl+a d)
# 3 List existing sessions
screen -ls
# 4 Reattach to a session (example ID 14000)
screen -r 14000

lsof

lsof

lists open files, which on Unix includes network sockets and device handles. It provides many filters to narrow results.

# List files opened by processes 123 and 456
lsof -p 123,456
# Show all TCP connections
lsof -i tcp
# Find the process using port 8080
lsof -i :8080

python -m

The -m flag runs a library module as a script, offering quick one‑liners for common tasks.

# Start a simple HTTP server on port 9080
python3 -m http.server 9080
# Pretty‑print JSON from stdin
python -m json.tool

vimdiff

vimdiff

invokes Vim in diff mode, allowing side‑by‑side comparison with colour highlighting. Navigation commands are built into Vim.

vim file1 file2

]c

– jump to next difference [c – jump to previous difference

nc (netcat)

Netcat is a versatile networking utility for creating connections, listening sockets, and simple data transfers. It can be used to open a reverse shell, test connectivity, or scan ports.

# Server: listen on port 5879 and execute a shell
nc -l -vv -p 5879 -e /bin/bash
# Client: connect to the server
nc -v 192.16.1.54 5879
# Keep listening after client disconnects
nc -l -k -p 5879 -e /bin/bash
# Simple port scan
nc -vzw 2 192.16.1.54 8888-9999

Convert Unix timestamp to readable date

Use the date command to translate epoch seconds into a formatted string. On macOS the flag is -r instead of -d.

# Linux
date -d @1658054000 +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
# macOS
date -r 1658054000

systemctl

To list all enabled services on a systemd‑based host, pipe the output of systemctl to a pager.

systemctl -l -t service | less