--- title: '37 Insane Linux Commands You Need to Know in 2025' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=6P-vjgPx9ww' video_id: '6P-vjgPx9ww' date: 2026-08-05 duration_sec: 665 --- # 37 Insane Linux Commands You Need to Know in 2025 > Source: [37 Insane Linux Commands You Need to Know in 2025](https://youtube.com/watch?v=6P-vjgPx9ww) ## Summary This video presents 37 advanced Linux commands that enhance productivity and system management, covering disk usage, file management, network diagnostics, and AI integration. The presenter demonstrates each tool with practical examples, emphasizing visual and interactive alternatives to traditional commands. ### Key Points - **Introduction to 37 Linux Commands** [00:02] — The video kicks off with a promise of 37 Linux commands, highlighting their power and utility, including visual and interactive tools. - **NCDU for Disk Usage** [00:16] — NCDU provides a visual, interactive way to see disk usage, allowing deletion and drill-down into folders, unlike traditional df/du. - **Duff and Ripgrep Alternatives** [00:29] — Duff offers a prettier version of df, while ripgrep (with coffee) is a fast Rust-based grep alternative for searching logs, functions, and API keys. - **Mosh for Remote Connections** [01:00] — Mosh is an SSH alternative that supports roaming, maintaining connections across network changes, ideal for mobile use. - **lshw for Hardware Info** [01:39] — lshw displays comprehensive hardware details, with options to filter by CPU, memory, network, and disks. - **MTR for Network Diagnostics** [02:03] — MTR combines ping and traceroute, providing live hop-by-hop latency and packet loss tracking. - **FD and FZF for File Management** [02:20] — FD is a faster, colorized find alternative, while FZF enables interactive filtering of lists, useful for history and process management. - **Ranger and Zoxide for Navigation** [02:47] — Ranger is a terminal file manager with Vim-like features, and Zoxide learns frequent directories for quick navigation. - **Exa for Listing** [03:11] — Exa replaces ls with better color coding, tree view, and icons. - **Glances and iotop for Monitoring** [03:24] — Glances is an all-in-one dashboard with web server and API options; iotop shows real-time disk I/O usage by process. - **stat and dstat for Details** [03:50] — stat provides detailed file metadata, while dstat combines vmstat, iostat, and netstat for comprehensive system stats. - **watch and progress for Monitoring** [04:18] — watch reruns commands at intervals (e.g., nvidia-smi), and progress shows progress of running commands like scp. - **dog and termshark for Network** [04:56] — dog is a colorful dig alternative with DNS over TLS, and termshark is a TUI for tshark, allowing interactive packet analysis. - **lsof for Ports** [05:37] — lsof -i shows processes using specific ports, useful for identifying what's listening. - **ipcalc for Subnetting** [05:52] — ipcalc quickly calculates subnet ranges, masks, and wildcard info from CIDR notation. - **Wormhole for File Transfer** [06:20] — Wormhole enables peer-to-peer, end-to-end encrypted file transfers with a simple command. - **systemd-analyze for Boot Time** [06:48] — systemd-analyze blame shows which services slow boot, and critical-chain helps identify bottlenecks. - **procs and lazydocker** [07:03] — procs is a prettier ps, and lazydocker provides an interactive TUI for Docker management. - **rsync and shred** [07:18] — rsync syncs only differences and resumes transfers; shred overwrites files to prevent recovery. - **moreutils tools** [07:46] — Moreutils includes ts for timestamps, errno for error codes, ifdata for network info, vidir for editing, and vip for pipeline editing. - **unp and jq** [08:15] — unp unpacks any archive by guessing type, and jq is a powerful JSON query tool. - **Taskwarrior for Tasks** [08:29] — Taskwarrior is a CLI task manager with add, list, and done commands. - **asciinema for Recording** [08:55] — asciinema records terminal sessions to text-based cast files, playable with pause, and can convert to GIF. - **Fabric and Ollama for AI** [09:53] — Fabric integrates AI with commands, and Ollama runs local models to generate commands on the fly. ### Conclusion The video showcases a curated list of modern Linux commands that significantly improve efficiency and user experience, from disk management to AI-assisted workflows. It encourages viewers to explore these tools and integrate them into daily use. ## Transcript killer. And it can even show you icons. Look at that. I'm using my mouse right now. Such a cool tool. This thing is kind of magic. How amazing is that? It's powerful. I mean, look at that. That's a superpower. 37 Linux commands. You will not believe the last few. Let's go. NCDU. Find out what's taking up so much space on your hard drive. It's like DF and DU, but better because it's visual and interactive. Woohoo. I can delete stuff right here. and even drill down into folders. Duff, the prettier version of DF. It shows you drive usage, but it just looks nicer. RIP Grap GP, but with coffee. Powered by Rust. It can do things like quickly finding errors in your logs. Look how fast that was. Find all your Python functions. That's so nuts. Or files that mention an API key. Seriously, it just makes Gre cry. Now, use Mosh to connect to your remote servers. Why? It's like SSH, but it supports roaming. Lose your connection, go from Wi-Fi to cellular. It keeps you That's killer. So, we'll jump into my remote server at Hostinger, the sponsor of this video. I forgot my password. This is embarrassing. Thankfully, I can management console, change my password. up, it doesn't work cuz I'll need mosh maintains that connection. Thankfully, I can log into Hostinger in my browser terminal. Get that installed and let's try it again. Boom. So, as long as you connection maintained. Now, while we're sitting here in my Hostinger VPS, let me show you another command. This is lshw. This will show me everything I need to know about the hardware resources in my system. I mean, it shows you everything. But if you want to find out just about the CPU, we can do this. LHW do a tick the CPU, we can do this. LHW do a tick C. Let's say CPU, just the CPU info. AMD epic. We can do the same thing for memory network discs. And by the way, you do get those specs for $6.99 a month. It's a whole home lab in the cloud. Host some practice some Linux commands, and if you use my code network chuck, the price Picture this. Ping and trace route have a baby. That's MTR. And that was weird. This tracks latency and packet loss hop by hop live. It's amazing. FD. It's like find, but it has less letters. Also, it's better. Better default settings insensitive, ignores hidden files and directories, and it has colorized output by default, and it's often faster. FCF or FuzzyFinder, interactive filtering of any list or pipe. We can look through our history, pipe it into FCF, and we powerful when you chain commands together. Doing something crazy like this, so I can easily kill a running process. Ranger is like a gooey file manager, but it's in the terminal. It has some Vim goodness, bulk renames, previews. That's kind of awesome. I don't use CD anymore. I use Z Oxide. It's like CD, but it's more forgiving. It will look at frequent and recently used directories and rank them. Check this out. I'm in the root right now. Normally, I'd have to type in tilda for my home directory to get to downloads. But no, Z has learned me. I can simply type in downloads, and it takes me right there. If I type in ZI and hit enter, it'll actually use FCF to give me a selection of my directories interactive. I don't use ls anymore either. I use Exa. It's got better color coding, tree view built in, and it can even show you icons. Look at that. Glances is your all-in-one stat dashboard. It shows you pretty much everything from a glance. And it has a ton of options. You can run it as a web server, which I could not But it does run an API, so you can monitor your stuff remotely. IO top. See show you a top style list of the processes using the most dis IO. And it's updating in real time. If you want to know every single little detail about a file, look no further than stat often built into your operating system. We'll type it in, look for a file, and it tells you everything from the day it was born. I know number. And if we do -f, it'll show us file system specific information like the ID. Definitely one of the nerdier commands, but still timeline view of exactly what you want to see. CPU, RAM, disk, network, memory. Run it by itself or add some options like top CPU. This combines aspects of VM stat, IO stat, I have stat, and net stat kind of all in one. I use the watch command all the time. It reruns any command every so many seconds you set. second for the Nvidia-smi command, and I can monitor my GPU cuz it's executing that command every half a second. Progress is a powerful command. Watch this. Type it in here. And right now it's showing me the progress of a secure copy happening in one of my T-Mug sessions. See, there it is right here. And I can actually type this in on the other side. Although it's kind of weird on the metrics. It can commands. Progress can also monitor multiple commands at once. Now, we used to use dig for DNS lookups. That's kind of messy. Dog is better. I mean, look at that. It's got some nice colors. Can do DNS over TLS. Although NASA wouldn't let me. You can output it in JSON. It's powerful. Now, you may have heard of TCP dump or even T-shark, but you know what's better? Term Shark. It's essentially a terminal user interface for T-shark. I mean, look how fun this is. I'm using my mouse right now. That's awesome. Let's filter by DNS. Oh my gosh. Is hostinger using Proxmox? Ah, this is fun to see. Let's keep that pcap. We can actually load in that pcap again. and examine it. Such a cool tool. This one might feel basic, but it's very fun. LSOF dash I. And then let's specify a port. Let's say port 22. This will show us the process that owns that port or the one that's using it. Let's check out port 80. Docker is using that one. There's something I've learned 40 times Subnetting. Thankfully, there's a command line tool for that. It's called command line tool for that. It's called IP calc. It's a quick subnet calculator that'll spit out ranges, mask, wildcard info just from using cider. Check this info just from using cider. Check this out. Let's do IP calc for 10.7.8 94 slash. Let's do a weird one. 18. All the info right there. Wormhole peer-to-peer end toend encrypted file transfer. This thing is kind of magic. With one command, I'll start to send my file, put it through a wormhole. It spits out this command. And over here in my hosting or VPS, I input that command in and start to receive. How amazing is that? Oh, by the way, that can be dealing with a firewall. Why is your system starting up so slow? What's figure it out right now. Sorry, that was a lot of energy. With the systemdanalyze command and then add blame at the end, showing you which services take the longest on the last boot up. We can also do critical chain dependencies helping us to understand the bottlenecks caused by sequential initialization. PS I'm not using ps anymore. That was lame. I'm using proxs. It's a prettier, more friendly version of psux. I can sort by CPU. View a tree. Way better than ps. Lazy Docker is a treasure. Check this out. One command. We get an interactive terminal user everything. It's probably my new favorite tool. I love RS sync for file transfers. It's smart, delta only, so it only syncs the differences. It can resume broken transfers and mirrors over SSH. Definitely the best way to copy directories or large files. Did you know that RM doesn't actually remove a file? It just unlinks it from the file system, but it's still there until it gets you'll want to use shred. Shred overwrites a file multiple passes before it deletes, thwarting data recovery. More utils gives us more utils, like this. Use the TS command to add timestamps to anything you're doing. Use error no to find out what error numbers mean. Use if data to look at your network interfaces more simply. You get much cleaner output. Use vidir to edit editor, which seems very dangerous. I'm scared. VIP allows you to insert your command pipeline and edit the data that is being piped between UNP will unpack any archive. I wish I would have found this one way earlier. fun. It actually guesses based on the archive type what the command should be. JQ is the JSON lightsaber. It will query and transform JSON output. I can do amazing oneliners using jq to grab exactly what I want to see. Getting pretty crazy with my output. Task Warrior is task management from the CLI. You really never have to leave. Check this out. We can add a task. List our this out. We can add a task. List our tasks. How cool is that? Mark task done. It told me I have more urgent tasks. I kind of love this. I actually might start using this. Hands down the most amazing command on this list. Ask Cinema or Ask Cinema. You can record your terminal sessions into small your terminal sessions into small textbased cast files. Watch this. textbased cast files. Watch this. I'm stuff. Hit control D to finish. Save it locally and we can play it back. Look at actually in the terminal. You can pause it with the spacebar. Go in here and that's so fun. You can self-host a server that you can upload these command you can use with Aski Cinema. Ask Cinema a another tool they make will convert your command line video into a GIF or a GIF. I'm not sure how to say it anymore. That is amazing. I'm just thinking like when I want to show command line, just make a quick GIF. GIF, send it to them. Fabric. If you're to interact with AI. I've shown it before, but check this out. Combine it with the commands we already know. For example, I might pipe in my history and commands. Look at that. That's a some recommendations, use it to analyze your SIS log. And this I'm still exploring, but the possibilities are endless. Use AI or things like Olama to help you craft commands on the fly. I'm a big fan of Olama because you can run it here locally. Check this out. I'll create a custom Olama agent. Its only job is to help me create commands on the fly. And then I simply run the model and say things like create a command that will find out what is taking up all of my disc space. Look how fast that was. Or tell it to build an inmount command. It's amazing. Which command was miss something cool? Let us know. Share the community. And by the way, have you sure you do hit that like button, subscribe, comment, cuz you got to hack subscribe, comment, cuz you got to hack YouTube today. Ethically, of course.