Last Updated on May 22, 2022
This is a series highlighting best-of-breed utilities. We’re covering a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides. There’s a complete list of the tools in this series in the Summary section.
Erik Karlsson, one of our regular contributors, has curated the finest free books that help you learn whatever programming language takes your fancy. There’s everything covered from C, C++, Java, Python, R, and much more. Link: Excellent Free Books to Master Programming.
The books offer an exceptional amount of information. But sometimes you’ll need some very specific information that you can access instantly. Erik is currently curating his recommendations for high quality free programming tutorials. But until they’re ready, we are showcasing a utility that offers an alternative to programming tutorials. Step forward cheat sheets with cheat.sh.
What makes cheat.sh special? It offers unified access to the best community driven cheat sheets repositories of the world. cheat.sh uses selected community driven cheat sheet repositories and information sources, maintained by thousands of users, developers and authors all over the world. Besides covering 58 programming languages, it also offers cheat sheets for more than 1,000 Linux commands, and access to information from Stack Overflow.
Installation
You don’t need to install cheat.sh to a local machine. The script has a curl/browser interface, so you can access the cheat sheets providing you have a working net connection.
But it’s also possible to install a command line client (cht.sh) which offers additional flexibility.
Installing cht.sh on your local system is very straightforward. Just type at a shell prompt:
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/cht.sh
You’ll need to install rlwrap and xsel with your distro’s package manager if they’re not already installed. On my Arch system, I typed:
After the installation, cht.sh can be used locally, without accessing the public cheat.sh service. The cht.sh client has its configuration file located at ~/.cht.sh/cht.sh.conf. Use it to specify the query options that you want to use with each query.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Operating System Commands & Stealth mode
Page 4 – Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Excellent Utilities | |
|---|---|
| AES Crypt | Encrypt files using the Advanced Encryption Standard |
| Ananicy | Shell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities |
| broot | Next gen tree explorer and customizable launcher |
| Cerebro | Fast application launcher |
| cheat.sh | Community driven unified cheat sheet |
| CopyQ | Advanced clipboard manager |
| croc | Securely transfer files and folders from the command-line |
| Deskreen | Live streaming your desktop to a web browser |
| duf | Disk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df |
| eza | A turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command |
| Extension Manager | Browse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions |
| fd | Wonderful alternative to the venerable find |
| fkill | Kill processes quick and easy |
| fontpreview | Quickly search and preview fonts |
| horcrux | File splitter with encryption and redundancy |
| Kooha | Simple screen recorder |
| KOReader | Document viewer for a wide variety of file formats |
| Imagine | A simple yet effective image optimization tool |
| LanguageTool | Style and grammar checker for 30+ languages |
| Liquid Prompt | Adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh |
| lnav | Advanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting |
| lsd | Like exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls |
| Mark Text | Simple and elegant Markdown editor |
| McFly | Navigate through your bash shell history |
| mdless | Formatted and highlighted view of Markdown files |
| navi | Interactive cheatsheet tool |
| noti | Monitors a command or process and triggers a notification |
| Nushell | Flexible cross-platform shell with a modern feel |
| nvitop | GPU process management for NVIDIA graphics cards |
| OCRmyPDF | Add OCR text layer to scanned PDFs |
| Oh My Zsh | Framework to manage your Zsh configuration |
| Paperwork | Designed to simplify the management of your paperwork |
| pastel | Generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors |
| PDF Mix Tool | Perform common editing operations on PDF files |
| peco | Simple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful |
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern |
| Rnote | Sketch and take handwritten notes |
| scrcpy | Display and control Android devices |
| Sticky | Simulates the traditional “sticky note” style stationery on your desktop |
| tldr | Simplified and community-driven man pages |
| tmux | A terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow |
| Tusk | An unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential |
| Ulauncher | Sublime application launcher |
| Watson | Track the time spent on projects |
| Whoogle Search | Self-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine |
| Zellij | Terminal workspace with batteries included |
cheat.sh rocks.