Mastodawn

Jim Nauer Jan 29, 2025

PSA: you can just run the command "cal" in your terminal to get a properly formatted calendar. or "cal -y" for the entire year.

i recently found out that surprisingly few modern linux users seem to be aware of this, and instead keep digging around for a graphical calendar. it's an old unix command so it's typically available on even the most lightweight of systems (like alpine)

Quad Jan 28, 2025

earlier today i saw someone trying to figure out what date next wednesday would be while ssh'd into a server. it was painful watching them fiddle with the windows taskbar calendar just to look at a date, and it was even more painful when i ran "cal" and realized nobody around me had heard about that command before

Jan-Theo Wassink Jan 29, 2025

@quad Or in this specific example

date -d="next wednesday"

But 'cal' is definitely shorter

schrotthaufen Jan 29, 2025

@quad Even systemd could tell them this. Then again, systemd is a whole OS…

systemd-analyze calendar “Wed”

Simon Michalke Jan 28, 2025

I got this list here bookmarked with a bunch of console services:

https://github.com/chubin/awesome-console-services

GitHub - chubin/awesome-console-services: A curated list of awesome console services (reachable via HTTP, HTTPS and other network protocols)

A curated list of awesome console services (reachable via HTTP, HTTPS and other network protocols) - chubin/awesome-console-services

GitHub

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@simon_m nice. i use ifconfig.me a lot, but more is always useful

What Is My IP Address? - ifconfig.me

Get my IP Address

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@quad Also there's https://github.com/leahneukirchen/wcal which I find to have a better output than most cal(1) implementations.

Also funnily, cal(1) is in POSIX but the output is undefined, I wonder why it got there…
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/cal.html

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@lanodan well, i'm honestly not sure how many people these days intentionally install a cli calendar.

the cal command it just nice because i have seen too many people move away from their ssh window, or even pull out their phone while setting up a cli server, just to check a date

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@quad Yeah, at least here I did because well, GUIs are ephemeral pieces of software.
In fact I think the last time I used a graphical calendar was back in Gnome 2 era.

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@lanodan Only calendar I actively use is the one on my phone. Even more than usual lately for medical appointments.

Besides that I usually just poke the calendar in KDE's panel when i need to check what weekday it is or similar.

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@quad Also OP reminds me that I'd recommend terminally unix people to browse in the shell utilities section of POSIX.

2024 version of it: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/

The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 8

@lanodan @quad even a GTK calendar has it's place though, https://yad-guide.ingk.se/calendar/yad-calendar.html on a status bar click comes in handy too from time to time

YAD Calendar

tag my other account instead Jan 28, 2025

@quad @lanodan (n)cal -w is the easiest way for me to check the week number for a certain date and they're installed everywhere, most calendar programs don't show it (at least easily)

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@eal @lanodan god yes, here in norway at least everything gets scheduled by weeks, it's often surprisingly difficult to figure out how to make a calendar display week numbers.

tag my other account instead Jan 28, 2025

@quad @lanodan >here in norway at least everything gets scheduled by weeks
yes!! we have the same problem

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@eal @lanodan i've heard this is a surprisingly nordic thing to do. if other countries don't do it i can't understand why, so much easier to keep track of a schedule when it's divided into 52 equal segments (well, except first/last week)

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@quad @eal Meanwhile here you sometimes have to remember if it's a month with 28 days or 31 and… I just never do and feel like I shouldn't have to, feels kind of like old imperial units with weird stuff to remember vs. metric where you just shift numbers around.

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@lanodan @eal Generally a fictional schedule at the shipyard I work at will be given in the following manner:

Vessel will arrive at end of week 5.
New plates will be fabricated and installed for port side week 6.
Starboard side's plating and polishing of both sides will be done week 7.
Vessel will be moved from the northern pier to the eastern pier, then get new piping installed in week 8.
Painters will do their thing week 9.
Customer will perform inspections and verify delivery in week 10, most likely Thursday.

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@lanodan @eal Luckily I work in IT, so I don't have to care about most of it. But I usually get stuff like "A ship will arrive in week 7. Coordinate with <phone number> to ensure they get internet transit when they arrive"

Rémi Cardona Jan 29, 2025

@lanodan @quad @eal careful with week numbers! some programs just say "week number" without specifying whether it's the US one or the EU/ISO one. Sometimes it's locale-specific, sometimes it's hard-coded.

In gnome-shell, I had to look at the JS code to figure out how the number was grokked. (always ISO, even on an en_US locale IIRC)

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@remi @quad @eal Lol, US moment.

Sebastian Djupsjöbacka Jan 29, 2025

@remi @lanodan @quad @eal Did not know that weeks are counted differently in the US. Imperial weeks?

Quad Jan 29, 2025

@djupsjob @remi @lanodan @eal It's because they start their week on Sunday. This means that if Jan 1st is a Sunday, then Jan 2nd (First Monday) would be considered Week 2 everywhere in the world, except for the US where they would still consider it Week 1.

Quad Jan 29, 2025

@djupsjob @eal @lanodan @remi Well actually it might not be divided quite like that. But my point is that US week numbers sometimes have an off-by-one error depending on where the new year lands that particular time.

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@djupsjob @remi @quad @eal Imperial typically refers to commonwealth / british empire, so more like US customary I guess.

Sebastian Djupsjöbacka Jan 29, 2025

@lanodan @quad @eal @remi Yes, I know. But imperial nowadays usually refers to units used in the US and almost nowhere else. I was just trying to be funny.

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@eal @quad Here in France I know internally it's effectively in weeks but annoyingly they tend to instead give rough estimates in days which is pretty hard to remember…

dxzdb Jan 29, 2025

@lanodan @eal @quad I just re-learned: on iOS you can show week numbers in the regular calendar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dOmqjwjrpg

Add the Week Numbers to your Calendar on the iPhone

YouTube

tag my other account instead Jan 29, 2025

@dxzdb @lanodan @quad someone actually created a whole video for "go to settings->apps->calendar and enable 'week numbers'"

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@eal @quad @dxzdb It's like the "Don't post screenshots of 3 lines of text!" but 100× worse.

Quad Jan 29, 2025

@lanodan @dxzdb @eal you'd be amazed at how many niche things you can find entire youtube videos about. usually some indian kid showing you how to do something on a samsung phone

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@quad @dxzdb @eal Wouldn't be surprised that reason for it is to guide someone with senator-level of tech illiteracy around the UI.

dxzdb Jan 29, 2025

@eal @lanodan @quad Yeah a bit overkill, but no ALT text needed 😏 Also it does show you what you get so that adds some value for someone that might not be sure if they want to try it.

fedops 💙💛Jan 28, 2025

@quad yeah, lots of basics get lost over time...

I like khal which also displays your appointments alongside the calendar.

https://github.com/pimutils/khal

mirabilos Jan 28, 2025

@quad @lanodan I packaged OpenBSD/MirBSD’s cal(1) for Debian to have sane calendar weeks guaranteed, both its cal and FreeBSD’s ncal (also packaged for Debian) are weird.

I also packaged MirBSD’s calendar(1) since it’s got extra functions (advent calculation, export in a format trivially converted to iCalendar, with a script and repo I also supply, so I now run calendar in each shell so I see my appointments but also have a readonly version of them on the smartphone).

Jason Bowen 🇺🇦Jan 29, 2025

@quad @lanodan It's also around on "legacy" OSes like AIX and HP-UX.

Quad Jan 29, 2025

@jbowen @lanodan Yes, because it's a unix command. It should be around in some form on any unix system, and by extension most unix-like systems.

It's even available in some weird places like FreeDOS iirc.

jan Anja(); // moved to @[email protected]Jan 29, 2025

@lanodan @quad another third-party utility is "mencal", which can be used for tracking any periodic events (such as menstrual cycle) in the console

Leo Jan 28, 2025

@quad 🤯

Quad Jan 28, 2025

@leo_wallentin amazing how a command can exist for 50 years and nobody tells you, eh

grayrattus Jan 28, 2025

@quad cal -a 3 gives you 3 months in advance. This is soo fucking useful.

enachtpfoetchen6s0 Jan 28, 2025

@quad looks like not default on my debian system. weird

kimapr Jan 28, 2025

@nachtpfoetchen @quad it's a part of `util-linux` so maybe it's only available as root because it's in /sbin/ and debian is being debian

enachtpfoetchen6s0 Jan 28, 2025

@kimapr @quad no actually on debian it is part of the 'ncal' package that isn't installed per default

Ryan Castellucci (they/them)

@quad I recently learned of cal -3 as well.

dxzdb Jan 29, 2025

@ryanc @quad I never knew about this - Thanks! I was expecting cal -5 or -6 to give me more months and that doesn't work😲

On also on macOS cal -a says “Illegal option"

kimapr Jan 28, 2025

@quad before i found out `cal` exists i didn't even use calendars... nowadays i do and uhh i still don't use calendars lmao

i just look at the current day number in my computer and when someone says something silly like "next Tuesday" i would be blissfully unaware wtf that means and ask them to use a real date format

cerement Jan 29, 2025

(side note: different distros install different versions of `cal` with slightly different options (and not counting `ncal` and `gcal`))

Bitter Donald Jan 29, 2025

@quad I've been using *nix systems since late last century.
I'd completely *forgotten* this command.

jjesse Jan 29, 2025

@quad Ran this from the command line of my Ubuntu 24.10 install and it said that I could install it w/ ncal

RedTechEngineer Jan 29, 2025

@jjesse @quad would you like to install this as a snap package? :D

AntiComposite Jan 29, 2025

@quad I regularly use `cal <date>` to figure out what date some old newspaper meant when they said "Last Tuesday". Much faster than scrolling back through Google Calendar.

Philip Jan 29, 2025

@quad Cool!
Any idea why my ubuntu machine doesn’t Have Today Highlighted, Even Though `ncal` does? (Apologies For weird capitalisation, Mona is having a day)

Robbie Jan 29, 2025

@quad whoa! Cool tip!

Raven667 Jan 29, 2025

@quad I think with the rise of servers, daemons and containers that we've forgotten that Unix started out as a *desktop* system for interactive users to create docs for printing, with roff. A bunch of user-friendly, quality of life tools like `cal` exist, text processing like awk, sort or join, and stuff that even I have never learned or forgotten about. There is a whole ecosystem still out there even if the great mass has moved on to webapps

Robert W. Gehl Jan 29, 2025

@quad every day is full of wonders with this OS. I had no clue...

🌧️ jschof 🌼Jan 29, 2025

@quad Woah...

PsySal Jan 29, 2025

@quad this helps me so much oh my god

llatan is outta here Jan 29, 2025

@quad - neat! It works nicely in terminal

𝚟𝚒𝚗𝚜 Jan 29, 2025

@quad *BSD also has calendar(1) https://man.netbsd.org/calendar.1

calendar(1) - NetBSD Manual Pages

Martin Jambon 🌍🌎🌏Jan 29, 2025

@quad I ended up with
alias cal='ncal -b -3'

ncal: because cal no longer highlights today's date
-b: make it display in the same orientation as cal
-3: show the previous and the next calendar months

The Debian/Ubuntu package for this is 'ncal'.