Initial release of dd was for Unix in 1974 and it's still updated for use in modern systems.
I used it just the other day and it was already installed.
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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Windows: can't run SETUP.EXE as it is a 32 bit program
We have a 22 year old version of RedHat 4. It works fine and is reliable but has problems with out dated security.
xdotool is not already installed, and also will not work 🙄
It does work but if you’re using Wayland, it won’t. But one would be rather silly to expect an X11/Xlib tool to work without X11.
I'm going to miss xdotool (and wmctrl) when my distro eventually ditches X11.
I don't use them often, but I do use them, and their functionality is nice to have.
There are partial replacements out there, but last I checked, they were very weak approximations.
what do those do? I run x11 but never knowingly used them
They allow the user to script changes to, and pull information from, windows in the window manager. Like read, if not also set, a window's title, change a window's dimensions, move it around, send it to a different desktop, send keypresses, bring a window to the foreground, etc. etc.
Basically, anything the user can do with the mouse, keyboard or window manager via the GUI, and a little more besides, can be automated.
The two commands work slightly differently to each other and one can often do something the other can't.
As an example, I have a script that resizes the active window to a 4:3 ratio at full vertical height on my 16:9 monitor. I've then bound that script to a keypress in the window manager. It's a lot like having something halfway between window mode and maximised mode.
Couldn't I do that with the mouse? Sure. But with the script I don't have to gauge by eye and spend multiple mouse clicks and movements trying to get it just right.
That sounds absolutely amazing and something that I'm definitely going to be looking up when I go on my desktop later. Thank you for informing me
Be aware that a lot of distros will be switching from X11 to Wayland at some point in the not-too-distant future and these ancient tools will not work there.
People have tried to write equivalents (ydotool is one I'm aware of), but Wayland has intentionally been written to make doing such things difficult, for "security" reasons.
I will be grumpy until I can make my scripts work again, but that's for future me to deal with.
Yeah, sadly, I'm aware. I know that Wayland is making its rounds. I'm not looking forward to it. I try it every once in a while to see if it's gotten better, but so far, every time I've tried, I have artifacting and tearing, which just doesn't happen on X11
However you're on Debian stable and the latest version of the package that came out 24 years ago is still too new.
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Helps that if they aren't installed, they will be aliased to the opensource equivalent.
I am looking at you cc. I should NOT have been able to follow a programming book that old so smoothly when I knew nothing about computers at the time.
Minecraft rpi edition no longer runs on the latest versions of debian. Used to be preinstalled on rpiOS though
No wayland, missing fuse2, pulseaudio, weird graphics libraries, java...
Java is wholly separate from Linux. In... basically every way possible.