12 Modern CLI Tools That Replace the Classics (and Why)

The classic Unix tools are brilliant, but many were designed in the 1970s. A new generation — mostly written in Rust and Go — keeps the same ideas while being faster, colourful and sensible by default. These are the ones that earned a permanent place on my machines.

Install them all on Arch in one go:

sudo pacman -S ripgrep fd bat eza fzf zoxide btop dust jq git-delta tldr lazygit

(On Ubuntu/Debian most are in apt too; note that fd is fd-find and bat is batcat there.)

1. ripgrep (rg) — instead of grep

Recursively searches the current folder, respects .gitignore, skips binaries, and is extremely fast.

rg "useEffect"                 # search everything
rg -t ts "TODO"                # only TypeScript files
rg -l "api_key"                # just list matching files
rg -C 2 "panic"                # with 2 lines of context

2. fd — instead of find

Simple syntax, sensible defaults, also respects .gitignore.

fd config                 # names containing "config"
fd -e md                  # all Markdown files
fd -H -t d node_modules   # include hidden, only directories

3. bat — instead of cat

Syntax highlighting, line numbers and git change markers. It also makes a great pager for man pages:

export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"

4. eza — instead of ls

Colours, icons, git status and a tree view built in.

alias ls='eza --group-directories-first'
alias ll='eza -lah --git --group-directories-first'
alias tree='eza --tree --level=2'

5. fzf — fuzzy find anything

The single biggest productivity boost on this list. It turns any list into an interactive fuzzy search. Enable the shell integration and you get:

• Ctrl+R — fuzzy history search
• Ctrl+T — fuzzy-pick a file and paste its path
• Alt+C — fuzzy cd into a subfolder

# ~/.bashrc  (or: source <(fzf --zsh) in ~/.zshrc)
eval "$(fzf --bash)"
export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND='fd --type f --hidden --exclude .git'

Pipe anything into it: git branch | fzf | xargs git checkout.

6. zoxide — a smarter cd

It remembers where you go. Type part of a folder name and it jumps to the best match.

eval "$(zoxide init bash --cmd cd)"   # replace cd itself
cd dhruv      # → ~/code/dhruvagrawat.com, if that's where you usually go
cdi           # interactive picker with fzf

7. btop — instead of top/htop

A beautiful resource monitor with CPU, memory, disks, network and processes on one screen, fully mouse-driven.

8. dust — instead of du

Shows at a glance which folders are eating your disk, as a tree with bars. Just run dust in any directory.

9. jq — JSON on the command line

Essential for working with APIs:

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/torvalds/linux | jq '.stargazers_count'
cat package.json | jq '.dependencies | keys'

10. delta — beautiful git diffs

Syntax-highlighted, side-by-side diffs everywhere git shows them:

# ~/.gitconfig
[core]
    pager = delta
[interactive]
    diffFilter = delta --color-only
[delta]
    navigate = true
    side-by-side = true

11. tldr — man pages, but useful

tldr tar shows the five commands you actually wanted, instead of the full manual.

12. lazygit — git in a terminal UI

Stage individual lines, rebase interactively, resolve conflicts and browse history with single keystrokes. It's the one tool I show people that makes them install it on the spot.

Should you alias the classics away?

I alias ls and cat but not grep or find: scripts, Stack Overflow answers and servers all assume the originals. Learn both — use the modern ones interactively, keep the classics for scripts.

Next step: keep all these aliases and configs in one place with dotfiles managed by GNU Stow.