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Zellij instead of tmux (not necessarily better, but it's easier to use)

Xonsh instead of bash (because you already know Python, why learn a new horrible language?)

bat instead of cat (syntax highlights and other nice things)

exa instead of ls (just nicer)

neovim instead of vim (just better)

helix instead of neovim (just tested it, seems promising though)

nix instead of your normal package manager (it works on Mac, and essentially every Linux dist. And it's got superpowers with devshells and home-manager to bring your configuration with you everywhere)

rmtrash instead of rm (because you haven't configured btrfs snapshots yet)

starship instead of your current prompt (is fast and displays a lot of useful information in a compact way, very customizable)

mcfly instead of your current ctrl+r (search history in a nice ncurses tui)

dogdns instead of dig (nicer colors, doesn't display useless information)

amp, kakoune (more alternative text editors)

ripgrep instead of grep (it's just better yo)

htop instead of top (displays stuff nicer)

gitui/lazygit instead of git cli (at least for staging, nice with file, hunk and line staging when you have ADHD)

gron + ripgrep instead of jq when searching through JSON in the shell (so much easier)

keychain instead of ssh-agent (better cli imo)

Wrote this on the train with my phone by checking https://github.com/Lillecarl/nixos/blob/master/common/defaul... for which packages I have installed myself :)



Tig also belongs in this list. An ncurses git repository browser that I use all the time.


> Xonsh instead of bash (because you already know Python, why learn a new horrible language?)

Exactly, one horrible language is enough!


I'm big fan of using micro[1] instead of nano/vim as the default command line text editor.

[1] https://micro-editor.github.io/


fd instead of find (fast, good defaults) https://github.com/sharkdp/fd


tuc instead of cut (cut text better than `cut`, or lines like head/tails - eg cut first and last line at once) (but I'm biased, I'm the author)

https://github.com/riquito/tuc/


ranger and vifm instead of midnight commander (vim key bindings)

lsd instead of exa (better formatting, icons)

mosh instead of ssh for interactive sessions (maintains session even with bad connectivity)

hyprland instead of sway instead of i3 instead of XMonad


nushell instead of Xonsh/bash/fish. A bit of a learning curve but worth it Also tig as a git ui


btop instead of htop instead of top


An annoying thing about btop is that it only uses the snap package manager and nothing else. You can still install it yourself easily but I don’t understand why they’d stick stick with snap alone.


>that it only uses the snap package manager and nothing else

The first installation method it shows for Linux systems is download a statically compiled binary and it already exists on the repos of every major distro. Where the only uses snap comes from?

https://github.com/aristocratos/btop#installation


htop has much better support for more obscure unices, fwiw. Supports every BSD, whatever Solaris is called these days.

Btop seems to only support Macos, Linux and FreeBSD.




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