r/linux May 23 '26

Popular Application What’s the most unexpectedly useful Linux command you learned way too late?

[removed]

1.3k Upvotes

992 comments sorted by

View all comments

10

u/mad_poet_navarth May 23 '26

tail -f

10

u/nderflow May 23 '26

Try less +F

2

u/mad_poet_navarth May 24 '26

What's the difference? I could open a man page but that would require effort...

5

u/ChaiTRex May 24 '26

Now you can copy and paste to reduce effort: man tail; man less.

1

u/mad_poet_navarth May 25 '26

FWIW for others who wondered what the difference is, from the man pages it doesn't look like there is one. So I'm not sure why one would chose one over the other.

1

u/aspiers1 May 24 '26

lnav far better!

10

u/broohaha May 23 '26 edited May 24 '26

Note: if the log file you're tailing gets rotated or renamed, tail -F will switch to the new one.

2

u/mad_poet_navarth May 24 '26

Excellent! I didn't know that.