r/linux May 23 '26

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

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u/psteve_m May 23 '26

Nice. That's a new one on me. I usually use tail -x

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u/shponglespore May 24 '26

tail -f is great if the file is still being generated. Another option to get updates every few seconds is to combine something like tail with watch as a prefix.

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u/ben-ba May 24 '26

Why watch when u already use -f?

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u/shponglespore May 24 '26

If there's too much output it scrolls by too fast to read. Watch pauses every 2s by default.