Efficient Linux at the CLI (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

This week we’re talking to Daniel J. Barrett, author of Efficient Linux at the Command Line as well as many other books. Daniel has a PhD and has been teaching and writing about Linux for more than 30 years (almost 40!). So we invited Dan to join us on the show to talk about efficient ways to use Linux. He teaches us about combining commands, re-running commands, $CDPATH hacks, and more.

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Featuring:

• Daniel J. Barrett – Website, LinkedIn, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Efficient Linux at the Command Line
• Daniel’s books
• Dan on O’Reilly
• Cold Ice Cream & Hot Kisses

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Luvut

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Square (00:00:58)

https://developer.squareup.com/

3. Start the show! (00:03:52)

4. Distro of choice (00:05:56)

5. Linux only? (00:07:39)

6. There are so many efficiency gains (00:08:32)

7. Minimum learning curve (00:11:41)

8. Command substitution (00:14:25)

9. Process substitution (00:17:01)

10. Which (00:22:22)

11. $CDPATH (00:25:05)

12. Sponsor: Changelog News (00:29:49)

https://changelog.com/news

13. I can see that biting me (00:31:28)

14. Challenge to move to a new machine (00:32:49)

15. Bash (00:35:22)

16. Explaining homebrew's install command (00:42:41)

17. Dan shares a riddle (00:48:41)

18. ChatGPT and learning Linux (00:52:24)

19. ChatGPT package hallucination (00:54:10)

20. There's a batter way (00:56:25)

21. Emacs (01:02:43)

22. Directory stack (01:05:19)

23. I'd watch videos of Dan (01:10:12)

24. Teaser for future books (01:15:02)

25. Cold Ice Cream & Hot Kisses (01:16:30)

26. Where to buy the books (01:18:15)

27. Up next (01:20:50)