Cheat Sheet
Charly's Column – cheat.sh
Whenever you really need documentation, it's almost always incomplete or outdated – or both. Sys admin columnist Charly K¸hnast recommends a radically different approach: the universal community documentation cheat.sh, which no Linux command and hardly any programming language should do without.
Even at school, teachers encouraged us to make cheat sheets – although actually using them was forbidden. Writing a cheat sheet helps you to keep things in mind longer. Cheat sheets are also useful after school.
For example, I have a coffee cup printed with maybe 50 important Vim commands that I occasionally consult for its more obscure finger exercises. Oddly, the matching 20-liter bucket with the basic command set for Emacs, which I saw at a Chaos Communication Congress, seems to have remained a one-off – clearly a missed opportunity.
I created an electronic cheat sheet, in which I archive code snippets and brief how-tos, in Nextcloud. Nevertheless, questions continually pop up for which I have to resort to the search engine that I mistrust the least. How do you overwrite a MAC address? How do you sort an array in Go? How do you discover the MIME encoding of a file? If only I had a cheat sheet for all of this!
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Kali Linux Waxes Nostalgic with BackTrack Mode
For those who've used Kali Linux since its inception, the changes with the new release are sure to put a smile on your face.
-
Gnome 50 Smooths Out NVIDIA GPU Issues
Gamers rejoice, your favorite pastime just got better with Gnome 50 and NVIDIA GPUs.
-
System76 Retools Thelio Desktop
The new Thelio Mira has landed with improved performance, repairability, and front-facing ports alongside a high-quality tempered glass facade.
-
Some Linux Distros Skirt Age Verification Laws
After California introduced an age verification law recently, open source operating system developers have had to get creative with how they deal with it.
-
UN Creates Open Source Portal
In a quest to strengthen open source collaboration, the United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology has created a new portal.
-
Latest Linux Kernel RC Contains Changes Galore
Linux kernel 7.0-rc3 includes more changes than have been made in a single release in recent history.
-
Nitrux 6.0 Now Ready to Rock Your World
The latest iteration of the Debian-based distribution includes all kinds of newness.
-
Linux Foundation Reports that Open Source Delivers Better ROI
In a report that may surprise no one in the Linux community, the Linux Foundation found that businesses are finding a 5X return on investment with open source software.
-
Keep Android Open
Google has announced that, soon, anyone looking to develop Android apps will have to first register centrally with Google.
-
Kernel 7.0 Now in Testing
Linus Torvalds has announced the first Release Candidate (RC) for the 7.x kernel is available for those who want to test it.
