Science and technology

Drive a locomotive via your Linux terminal

It’s December, and each Linux terminal person deserves a reward only for making via the yr. So we’re bringing you a type of creation calendar of Linux command-line toys. What’s a command-line toy? It is perhaps a sport, a pointless little time waster, or simply one thing to carry you pleasure on the terminal.

Today’s Linux command-line toy is a suggestion from Opensource.com group moderator Ben Cotton. Ben urged sl, which is brief for steam locomotive.

It’s additionally, conveniently and never coincidentally, a standard typo for the Linux ls command. Want to cease mistyping ls? Try putting in sl. It’s most likely packaged to your default repos. For me, in Fedora, which means it was as easy to put in as:

$ sudo dnf set up sl -y

Now, simply kind sl to strive it out.

You could discover, as I did, that Ctrl+C does not derail your prepare, so it’s important to watch for your complete prepare to move. That’ll educate you to mistype ls!

Want to take a look at the supply to sl? It’s over on GitHub.

sl can be a terrific alternative to share a private PSA about open supply licensing. While its license was “open source enough” to be packaged for my distribution, it is not technically an OSI-approved license. After the copyright line, the license reads merely:

Everyone is permitted to do something on this program together with copying,
modifying, and enhancing, except you attempt to faux that you just wrote it.
i.e., the above copyright discover has to look in all copies.
THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ANY RESPONSIBILITY WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE.

Unfortunately, once you selected a license that is not OSI-approved, chances are you’ll by accident be creating additional work to your customers, as they have to determine whether or not your license will work for his or her state of affairs. Do their company insurance policies enable them to contribute? Can they even legally use this system? Does the license mesh with the license of one other program they want to combine with it?

Unless you are a lawyer (and maybe, even if you’re), navigating the area of non-standard licenses might be tough. So should you’re nonetheless on the lookout for a New Year’s Resolution, why not resolve to decide on solely OSI-approved licenses for any new tasks you begin in 2019.

Do you could have a favourite command-line toy that you just assume I must profile? The calendar for this collection is usually stuffed out however I’ve bought just a few spots left. Let me know within the feedback beneath, and I will test it out. If there’s area, I will attempt to embody it. If not, however I get some good submissions, I will do a round-up of honorable mentions on the finish.

Check out yesterday’s toy, Box yourself in on the Linux command line, and test again tomorrow for an additional!

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