The Linux terminal is incredibly powerful, but using it can feel like a chore—especially if you’re new to Linux. You have to remember too many commands, type out long strings with absolute precision, and parse dense, text-only output. But that friction is just the default experience. With the right tools, you can make the terminal far more intuitive and visually useful. To help you out, here are three such must-have Linux terminal apps to try this weekend.
Navi
Stop Googling the same command for the umpteenth time
Navi is best understood as a smarter, interactive replacement for manually searching command syntax. Normally, when you forget how a command works on Linux, you either rely on memory, search the web, or open the manual page using the man command. This works, but it’s often slow and overwhelming. Man pages are comprehensive, but not always practical when you just need the exact syntax for a specific task.
This is where Navi changes the workflow. Instead of reading long documentation, Navi gives you searchable cheat sheets with ready-to-run command examples. Think of it like a command palette for your terminal.
For example, let’s say you want to compress a folder into a .tar.gz archive. Normally, you might need to remember something like:
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz folder/
But if you can’t remember it, you can just run navi to search for something like compress folder, and Navi will show you the correct command instantly. This makes it especially useful for commands you use occasionally but never memorize, like ffmpeg, rsync, docker, git, and so on.
But that’s not all. Navi also supports parameterized commands. For example, instead of a static cheat sheet entry like:
git checkout branch-name
Navi can turn branch-name into an editable placeholder, letting you fill it in before running it.
So the workflow becomes:
- Search for the command.
- Fill in the variables.
- Execute.
That makes it much faster than Googling syntax or using the man pages.
Now, you can install Navi on Ubuntu, using Homebrew:
brew install navi
If you don’t already have Homebrew installed on your system, you can follow this guide.
8/10
- Operating System
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Kubuntu 24.04 LTS
- CPU
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Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (2.7GHz up to 5.4GHz)
This laptop is purpose-built for developers and professionals who want a Kubuntu Linux-powered portable workstation and gaming platform. It features an Intel processor capable of hitting 5.4GHz and both integrated graphics and a dedicated NVIDIA 5070 Ti GPU for when you need extra power for machine learning or games.
Zoxide
Why type the whole path when one word will do
Zoxide works as a smarter and faster version of the cd (change directory) command in Linux. Normally, if you want to go to a directory in the terminal, you need to type out its full (or relative) path. For example, if I wanted to open the directory where I keep all my How-To Geek articles, I’d type something like:
cd ~/Documents/HowToGeek/Articles
As you can see, this can make terminal navigation feel unnecessarily cumbersome. However, with Zoxide I can just type:
z articles
and it’ll take me straight to my articles’ directory.
That said, what if you have similar directory names across multiple projects? Let’s say you have ~/Clients/Client1/Articles and ~/Clients/Client2/Articles. In that case, you can narrow down the search with a command like this:
z client1 articles
or:
z client2 articles
This eliminates the need to type full paths, slashes, or remember exact folder structures.
Now, I should mention that it usually takes a few days of regular use before Zoxide has enough history to become genuinely useful. You see, by default, Zoxide doesn’t have a full record of all your directories. It’s only when you visit a directory using cd, that it records that location and builds an internal index based on frequency and recency. As that index grows, it gets better at predicting where you want to go.
However, you can streamline that process by manually adding those paths with this command: zoxide add
Alternatively, you can pre-index all your existing directories with this command:
find ~ -type d -not -path '*/.*' -not -path '*/node_modules/*' -not -path '*/.git/*' | while read -r dir; do zoxide add "$dir"; done
This scans your home directory and adds your folders into Zoxide immediately—skipping hidden folders and common clutter like Git repositories and node_modules.
Now, to install Zoxide, run the following command:
curl -sSfL | sh
Then initialize it by adding this line to your shell config file:
eval "$(zoxide init bash)"
Once set up, Zoxide turns directory navigation from a path-based process into a memory-based one—making terminal movement much faster. It’s a must-have tool if you want to become more fluent in the terminal.
Bottom
System monitoring that doesn’t look like the ‘90s
Bottom is a modern replacement for traditional Linux system monitoring tools. Normally, if you want to monitor what’s happening on your system in real time—like CPU usage, RAM consumption, running processes, or disk activity—you’d use top or htop. These tools work well, but they can feel dense, outdated, or limited depending on what you’re trying to monitor.
Bottom gives you a cleaner visual while making it more data-rich. Instead of just showing raw process lists, it presents multiple live panels for CPU, memory, network, disk usage, temperatures, and processes—all in one terminal window. You get live graphs showing usage trends over time, which makes it easier to spot spikes and sustained load.
This becomes especially useful when troubleshooting. For example, if your system feels slow, Bottom lets you quickly identify which process is consuming CPU, how much RAM is being used, whether swap is filling up, disk reads/writes are saturated, or network traffic is unusually high.
It also includes process filtering. This means that instead of manually scanning through a list of potentially hundreds of processes, you can just press “/” and search for something specific like Firefox, Docker, or Python. This makes isolating problem processes much faster. Bottom also supports mouse navigation, which makes moving between panels more convenient for folks who aren’t yet comfortable with keyboard-only tools.
To install Bottom on Ubuntu:
sudo snap install bottom
Or via Cargo:
cargo install bottom
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The Linux terminal can be a lot more intuitive
The terminal often gets a reputation for being intimidating, but tools like these prove it can be just as approachable as any GUI. The more you lean into it, the more powerful your workflow becomes. So give these a weekend trial—you might find yourself reaching for the terminal more often than you expected.
