Articles

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moosh: the Moo Shell

by benjamin@tty1.blog at 2023-09-13T00:58:02.000Z

As a joke, this week I coded a Linux shell: moosh. The whole idea behind moosh is that it responds to every command with a random-length "MooOooOOo…"

So, yes, it's a joke. But let's take a look at it and see if there are any ideas about scripting we can learn along the way.

a 7 minute read

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Shell, Yes!

by btp@brandont.dev at 2023-07-14T13:29:18.000Z

For any Linux enthusiast, administrator, developer, systems engineer, or overall neck-beard, the terminal is the meat and potatoes of a good chunk of day-to-day work and interaction with Linux. Your terminal's shell is a powerful tool to make your work easier and more fun to work with.

Configuring your shell to work for your needs is a useful skill to have and is at the heart of automation in your terminal environment. We computer nerds are lazy and love tweaking computer environments to do work for us.

a 12 minute read

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Terminal-Based Music

by benjamin@tty1.blog at 2023-06-10T14:06:55.000Z

About a year ago, I stopped using Spotify for my music, instead moving to local audio files. I've never regretted that decision. When I started transitioning to a terminal-based workflow, though, I had to find good utilities to manage and play my collection.

I think that the results have been far more useful than the graphical apps I used to use were.

a 4 minute read

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Leveling Up Your Filetree with xdg-user-dirs

by benjamin@tty1.blog at 2023-05-08T02:21:59.000Z

Have you ever noticed that there are certain directories everyone has? ~/Documents, ~/Downloads, ~/Desktop, and so forth? Some of them you don't need, some of them you might wish were named differently, but any time you rename or delete them, the originals reappear?

You see, these directories follow a standard so that all programs know where they are—with the right tools under your belt, you can customize them.

a 5 minute read

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You Don't Need a File Manager

by benjamin@tty1.blog at 2023-04-08T20:17:32.000Z

A file manager feels like an essential part of an operating system. In a blog where I talk largely about using terminal applications instead of GUIs, you might think I'd spend this article exploring some terminal-based file managers.

Not so. Spare me a moment of your time, friend, and I will endeavour to illuminate why you, master of command-line secrets, have no need for such a petty thing as a "file manager."

a 6 minute read

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How to Save the World with tar

by benjamin@tty1.blog at 2023-03-31T23:13:41.000Z

While there are hundreds of difficult-to-understand commands out there, few have acquired the notoriety of tar. Most guides are filled with abstruse commands such as tar -czvf archive.tar.gz ~/Downloads/ with little to no explanation. Based on conversations I've had, people who interact with tar tend to just memorize a basic command or too, like tar -xvf <filename> and hope for the best.

Let's take a closer look at tar and learn how it actually works.

a 7 minute read

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Anatomy of a Command

by benjamin@tty1.blog at 2023-03-25T19:26:31.000Z

For the most part, this blog will not be dealing with the very basics. I find it safe to assume that most people interested in a blog about the Linux terminal already have some degree of fundamental knowledge about it.

That said, it's a good idea to have a grounding place we can all start off from. Let's take a command and dissect it, looking at its parts and learning what they mean.

a 5 minute read

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Introduction

by benjamin@tty1.blog at 2023-03-24T14:35:57.000Z

Welcome to tty1, a blog about the Linux terminal! Get started on your journey with this article.

a 2 minute read

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