Supercharging My Fedora 43 Ptyxis Terminal with Better Defaults 🧨

After fleeing Windows 10’s EOL doom on my trusty Core i7-7700H laptop, Fedora 43 Workstation’s Ptyxis terminal (the default beast with container tabs, dark mode perfection, and GPU acceleration).

I realized that even though the terminal is modern, my muscle memory was still summoning old-school commands like cat, ls, find, grep, and even cls from my Windows refugee days. Time to upgrade the commands, not just the OS. 😏

I channeled my old registry-tweaking soul from Windows 98 through 10 days, installing modernizers like bat, fd, ripgrep, lsd, tldr.

Then aliased them over classics so ls and pals auto-upgrade. No muscle memory rewrite needed! Ptyxis renders their colorful glory flawlessly. 😎

These tools aren’t tweaks; they’re revolutions—faster, smarter, Git-aware eye candy that make my Pentium 4-era Gentoo live CD dreams real. Laugh at grep’s sloth while ripgrep blitzes monorepos? Check. Syntax-highlighted “cats” like VS Code? Yup. My Zorin/Pop!_OS dabbling hinted at this power & now Fedora 43 is nailing it .

So this is how I swapped out the classics for nicer, more helpful tools— bat, fd, ripgrep, lsd, tldr — and wired aliases so my old habits still work, just… better.

The end result? Same keystrokes, completely new experience.

Old vs New: What I Replaced 🔁

Here’s the mapping of what I actually changed:

• cat ➜ bat
• find ➜ fd
• grep ➜ ripgrep (rg)
• ls ➜ lsd
• man ➜ tldr
• cls ➜ clear (for Windows muscle memory)

The key idea: don’t fight habits, hijack them. I still type ls and grep like a 20‑year Windows/Unix hybrid, but the output looks and behaves like something from this decade.

cat ➜ bat: Reading Files Like a Human 👀

cat is fine… if you enjoy staring at a wall of monochrome text. bat takes the same job and makes it actually pleasant to use.

What bat adds over cat:

• Syntax highlighting for tons of languages and file types (scripts, configs, JSON, YAML, you name it)
• Line numbers by default (amazing when debugging or sharing snippets)
• Git integration: shows which lines are changed vs HEAD in tracked files
• Optional paging when output is long, instead of dumping a scroll-fest in one go

cat config.yaml = “good luck”.
bat config.yaml = “oh wow, I can read this.” 🤩

Install (Fedora 43):

sudo dnf install bat

Alias:

alias cat 'bat --paging=never --style=numbers'

Now every time I type cat, I get a prettier, more informative view without changing my workflow.

find ➜ fd: Searching Without a PhD in find Flags 🔍

find is powerful but feels like it was designed by someone who hates humans. fd keeps the idea of find but makes it fast and sane.

What fd improves over find:

Simple default usage: fd foo searches recursively for names containing “foo”

Ignores hidden and .git stuff by default (can be turned back on when needed)

Smart case: lowercase pattern = case-insensitive, includes uppercase = case-sensitive

Uses regular expressions but doesn’t force you to type a small novel each time

Example:

# Old
find . -name "*.py"

# New
fd '\.py$'

Install (Fedora 43):

sudo dnf install fd-find

Fedora names the binary fdfind, so:

Alias:

alias find 'fdfind --color=auto'
alias f 'fdfind --hidden --exclude .git'

Now find is actually fd, and f is my “search everywhere, including dotfiles” shortcut.

grep ➜ ripgrep (rg): Searching Code at 2026 Speeds ⚡

grep has served faithfully since the dinosaurs, but modern codebases absolutely demolish it. ripgrep (rg) is like grep’s hyperactive, gym-rat cousin.

What ripgrep improves:

Much faster on big trees (multi-threaded, optimized search engine)

Automatically respects .gitignore and similar ignore files

Skips binary files and build artifacts by default

Provides nicer defaults for recursive searches

Example:

# Old
grep -R "myFunction" .

# New
rg "myFunction"

Same intent, way less typing, a lot less waiting.

** Install (Fedora 43):**

sudo dnf install ripgrep

Alias:

alias grep 'rg --color=auto'
alias egrep 'rg -i'
alias fgrep 'rg --fixed-strings'

Now every unconscious grep call silently routes through ripgrep and my terminal feels faster than my laptop actually is. 🥲

ls ➜ lsd: Directories With Actual Visual Clues 📂

ls prints filenames. lsd prints information.

What lsd adds:

Colors and icons for file types (much easier to scan visually)

Tree view output (lsd —tree) when you want structure at a glance

Better defaults for layout and formatting

Still close enough to ls that your fingers don’t revolt

Example:

# Old
ls la

# New
lsd la

Same command shape, much more readable.

Install (Fedora 43):

sudo dnf install lsd

To see icons, you’ll want a Nerd Font or similar configured in Ptyxis (e.g., one of the Noto/nerd‑patched fonts).

Aliases:

alias ls 'lsd'
alias ll 'lsd -l'
alias la 'lsd -a'
alias l 'lsd -al'

I barely remember what stock ls looks like anymore. Probably gray and sad.

man ➜ tldr: “What’s the Flag I Actually Need?” 📘

man pages are detailed… too detailed when you just want “How do I use this again?”. tldr is the “too long; didn’t read” version of man: short, example-focused cheatsheets.

What tldr gives you:

Short description of the command

A handful of the most common, practical usage examples

Enough to jog your memory without scrolling for days

Example:

tldr tar

Returns a concise list of “do this exact thing” snippets instead of an encyclopedia.

Install (one simple way):

# Python client via pipx (recommended pattern)
pipx install tldr

Check the official site for other client options or install methods if you prefer a different language client. [web:6][web:13]

Alias:

alias man 'tldr'

Now when my muscle memory types man tar, I get a quick cheatsheet instead of a novel.

cls ➜ clear: Healing My Windows Muscle Memory 🧠

This one is simple but vital for a recovering Windows user:

In CMD/PowerShell: cls

In Linux: clear

Rather than retrain my fingers (good luck with that after two decades), I just made cls work:

alias cls 'clear'

Now I can smack cls all day and Fedora politely clears the screen instead of judging me.

How I Wired the Aliases 🧵

On Fedora 43 with bash, I keep things tidy using a separate aliases file.

Create the config directory (if it doesn’t exist):

mkdir -p ~/.config/bashrc.d

Create/edit the aliases file:

nano ~/.config/bashrc.d/aliases

Paste all the aliases:

# cat -> bat
alias cat 'bat --paging=never --style=numbers'

# find -> fd
alias find 'fdfind --color=auto'
alias f 'fdfind --hidden --exclude .git'

# grep -> ripgrep
alias grep 'rg --color=auto'
alias egrep 'rg -i'
alias fgrep 'rg --fixed-strings'

# ls -> lsd
alias ls 'lsd'
alias ll 'lsd -l'
alias la 'lsd -a'
alias l 'lsd -al'

# man -> tldr
alias man 'tldr'

# Windows muscle memory
alias cls 'clear'

Make sure your main ~/.bashrc sources ~/.config/bashrc.d/* (many Fedora setups do this already; if not, add something like):

for f in ~/.config/bashrc.d/*.sh ~/.config/bashrc.d/*aliases; do
  [ -r "$f" ] && . "$f"
done

Reload:

source ~/.bashrc

Open a new Ptyxis tab and all your “old” commands are now powered by their upgraded twins.

edit : Doing This in Fish 🐟

This article is about the time I was still on bash, but if you’ve moved on to fish shell, aliases work a bit differently.

In fish, alias is just sugar for a function, and fish makes life easier when it comes to setting up aliases:

example:

alias -s cat bat

That’s my “same keystrokes, better terminal” setup on Fedora 43 with Ptyxis. Still typing like an old Windows power user—just getting way better output for my trouble. 😄