Programming

The Terminal Is Your Best Friend: 5 Command-Line Utilities That Will Replace Your GUI

A practical guide to five command-line tools -- lazygit, tmux, fzf, qwen-cli, and ripgrep -- that can dramatically speed up a developer's workflow by replacing common GUI interactions with faster terminal alternatives.

Introduction

Modern developers spend significant time switching between windows and hunting for the right functions in graphical interfaces. This article by Fedor Yakushkov presents five command-line utilities that can substantially speed up your workflow and change your approach to development.

1. lazygit

A TUI (Terminal User Interface) for Git.

Key features:

  • Atomic commits: Line-by-line staging of changes to create clean, logically separated commits
  • Interactive rebase: Visual editing of commit history without typing commands
  • Branch visualization: A clear graph of branches and commits
  • Conflict resolution: A convenient interface for choosing code versions during merges

Installation instructions are available in the project's GitHub repository.

2. tmux

Terminal Multiplexer — a session manager for your terminal.

Key features:

  • Sessions: Detach from a session without stopping processes
  • Windows and panes: Organize your workspace within a single terminal
  • Pair programming: Collaborate by connecting to the same session over SSH

Documentation is available on the project's GitHub Wiki.

3. fzf

Fuzzy Finder — an interactive filter with fuzzy search.

Key features:

  • Built-in integrations: Ctrl+R for history search, Ctrl+T for files, Alt+C for directory navigation
  • Pipeline support: Use in pipe chains for interactive selection
  • Preview: Optional display of file contents during search

Usage examples:

# Switch git branches interactively
git branch | fzf | xargs git checkout

# Kill a process interactively
ps -ef | fzf | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9

The official repository contains instructions and advanced configuration options.

4. qwen-cli

A CLI tool for interacting with Qwen language models from Alibaba.

Key features:

  • Code and command generation: Create scripts without needing to search the web
  • Code explanation: Analyze files and commands
  • Rapid prototyping: Generate boilerplate code

Installation:

  • Register on Alibaba Cloud DashScope
  • Create an API key (free for the starter tier)
  • Add the key to your environment variables

Repository: https://github.com/QwenLM/qwen-code

5. ripgrep (rg)

A modern Rust-based implementation of grep designed for searching codebases.

Key features:

  • Automatic filtering: Ignores node_modules, hidden files, and binaries by default
  • High speed: Multi-threaded architecture ensures fast search
  • Advanced filtering: Search only within specific file types
  • Convenient output: Match highlighting, line numbers, and grouped results

Basic usage:

rg "search_text"

This single command solves 90% of search tasks.

All installation options are listed in ripgrep's documentation on GitHub.

Conclusion

The author recommends not trying to learn all the tools at once. Instead, pick the one tool that solves your most pressing problem and use it for a week. In practice, each tool becomes an indispensable part of your workflow within just a few days.

As the author puts it: "This is one of the best investments in personal productivity" — each tool saves you dozens of minutes every day.

Further reading