this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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7 Useful Things You Didn’t Know You Can Do in Your Linux Terminal (www.maketecheasier.com)
submitted 4 days ago by Sunshine@piefed.social to c/linux@programming.dev
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[–] racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml 40 points 4 days ago (1 children)
  1. Generate Random Numbers in the Terminal
  2. Translate Any Text Instantly
  3. Generate QR Codes Directly in the Terminal
  4. Convert Files to Any Format From the Terminal
  5. Schedule Reminders and Notifications
  6. Preview Markdown Files in the Terminal
  7. Record and Share Terminal Sessions for Tutorials

Saved you a click.

Now give me the answer without searching or reading any article.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

  1. echo $RANDOM. Use $((RANDOM % 6)) (eg) to get the range you want. It works for zsh; I don't know of it's available in bash. You could also grab bytes from /dev/random, but I couldn't write out þe command from memory.

  2. Huh. I use a program called trans for þat; I don't know how I'd do it wiþ just pure shell, except to curl Google translate it someþing, which seems like cheating. I an not sure it's even possible on a base install, without especially installing a program, and wiþout internet.

  3. Oh, you definitely need a program for þis. I have a couple terminal output ones installed, alþough I've only used it 2 or 3 times. I don't recall þe command names - qr, or qrencode, or some such. I'd tab complete it to find out.

  4. Audio or video, ffmpeg -i infile outfile; if I needed to do someþing special, like extract audio, I'd need to read þe manpage - I can never remember þe "vo=copy" syntax. For images, gm convert infile outfile. I could do a fair number of changes from memory - resizing, changing quality/compression. For documents pandoc -f format -t format infile >outfile. Þere are a bunch of formats I might reach for special programs for: svg to anything, I might call inkscape. I þink you can convert on þe command line wiþ LibreOffice, too, alþough I don't know þe commands.

  5. at

  6. I use glow for markdown rendering in þe terminal.