Cool Linux Terminal Tools: 16 Useful and Fun Command Line Tools to Install

Updated: 4 November 2026 · Applies to: Debian 13, Ubuntu 24.04 and 26.04, AlmaLinux 10 with EPEL (package versions from those repositories)

The most useful terminal tools for a Linux server or desktop are btop or htop (live system monitor), ncdu (what is using disk space), tmux (sessions that survive a dropped SSH connection), fzf (fuzzy finder), ripgrep (fast search), bat, eza, jq, tldr and trash-cli. For fun there are figlet, toilet, boxes, lolcat, cmatrix and chafa. On Debian and Ubuntu all of them install from the standard repositories with one command; on AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux most come from EPEL.

Install them

1. Debian 13, Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 26.04 (everything below is in the standard repositories):

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install btop htop ncdu duf tmux fzf ripgrep bat eza jq tealdeer trash-cli \
     figlet toilet boxes lolcat cmatrix chafa

2. AlmaLinux 10 and Rocky Linux 10: most tools come from EPEL. The epel-release package notes that many EPEL packages need the CRB repository, so check that dnf repolist lists crb (if not, run sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb):

   sudo dnf install epel-release
   sudo dnf install btop htop ncdu duf tmux fzf ripgrep bat jq tldr figlet toilet lolcat chafa

   trash-cli, boxes, cmatrix and eza were not in EPEL 10 when we tested. According to its README, trash-cli can be installed with pipx install trash-cli.

Two name differences on Debian and Ubuntu: bat is started as batcat, and lolcat is installed in /usr/games. Ubuntu has /usr/games in everyone's PATH; on Debian only normal users have it, so as root run /usr/games/lolcat.

Useful tools for everyday work

1. btop and htop: a live, colour view of CPU, memory, disks, network and processes; press q to quit. More in How to List Running Processes in Linux (ps, top, htop and pgrep).
2. ncdu: scans a folder and lets you browse it sorted by size, so you find what is filling a disk in seconds. Run ncdu -x / (-x stays on one file system). Other ways to measure folders: How to Check the Size of a Directory or File in Linux and Ubuntu (du, ls and stat).
3. duf: a clearer table of disks and free space than df -h.
4. tmux: start tmux, run a long job, detach with Ctrl+b then d, and reattach later with tmux attach, even after your SSH connection dropped. See How to Install Tmux and Basics About Tmux?.
5. fzf: type part of a file name or a command from your history and pick it from a filtered list. See Fzf: A Quick Fuzzy File Search from Linux Terminal.
6. ripgrep (rg): searches a whole folder tree for text, much like grep -rn but faster:

   $ rg -n db_ /root/site
   /root/site/config.php:2:$db_host = "localhost";
   /root/site/config.php:3:$db_name = "shop";

7. bat (batcat on Debian and Ubuntu): like cat, with syntax highlighting, line numbers and paging.
8. eza: a modern ls with colours and a tree view:

   $ eza --tree site
   site
   ├── css
   │   └── style.css
   └── index.php

9. jq: pretty-prints and filters JSON from APIs and config files:

   $ echo '{"name":"vps","ram":4,"disks":["nvme0n1"]}' | jq -r .name
   vps

10. tldr: short, practical examples instead of a full manual page. Debian and Ubuntu ship the tealdeer client (run tldr --update once to download the pages); EPEL ships the Python client, which downloads pages on first use:

    $ tldr du
    
      Disk usage: estimate and summarize file and directory space usage.
      ...
      Show the size of a single directory, in human-readable units:
    
          du [-sh|--summarize --human-readable] path/to/directory

    (output shortened)
11. trash-cli: trash-put file moves files to the trash instead of deleting them, trash-list shows them and trash-restore brings one back:

    $ trash-put /root/site/php.ini && trash-list
    2026-10-09 19:05:15 /root/site/php.ini

    Its authors advise against aliasing rm to trash-put, because the two behave differently.

Fun tools (banners, colours and pictures)

1. figlet and toilet: turn text into large ASCII letters, for example for a login banner in /etc/motd. toilet adds more fonts and colour filters.

   $ figlet Ucartz
    _   _                _
   | | | | ___ __ _ _ __| |_ ____
   | | | |/ __/ _` | '__| __|_  /
   | |_| | (_| (_| | |  | |_ / /
    \___/ \___\__,_|_|   \__/___|

2. boxes: draws a box around text or code comments; boxes -l lists the designs.

   $ echo "Backup finished" | boxes -d stone
   +-----------------+
   | Backup finished |
   +-----------------+

3. lolcat: colours any output with a rainbow: figlet Hello | lolcat. AlmaLinux's EPEL package is a different implementation with the same name and basic use.
4. cmatrix: the falling green characters from the film The Matrix; press q to stop. It uses CPU the whole time it runs, so do not leave it running on a server.
5. chafa: shows images and animated GIFs in the terminal using Unicode and colour, for example chafa photo.jpg. Handy for checking an image on a server over SSH without downloading it.

Tools from the older version of this list

• Googler (Google search in the terminal) is discontinued: its GitHub repository was archived by the owner in March 2022 and is read-only. For web search from the terminal, ddgr is packaged in Debian 13, Ubuntu 26.04 and EPEL 10: see DuckDuckGo Browser on Linux: Use DuckDuckGo in Firefox, Chrome and the Terminal.
• Browsh (a text browser) needs Firefox installed alongside it and is not in the Debian 13, Ubuntu 26.04 or EPEL 10 repositories, so it is heavy for a server.
• Wikit (Wikipedia summaries) is installed through npm (npm i wikit -g), so it needs Node.js; it is not packaged by the distributions.
• No More Secrets (nms, the "decryption" effect from the film Sneakers) is not packaged in Debian 13, Ubuntu 26.04 or EPEL 10; you would build it from source.

Most of these tools are small and run fine on any VPS or dedicated server where you have root access. On a shared hosting account you usually cannot install packages, so use the tools that are already there, such as du and top.