Many feel that the the command line offers only archaic system tools crafted by gnarly old Unix geeks who cut their coding teeth before there was an Internet, let alone a blogosphere. They are sadly mistaken. The focus of this week's CLI Magic column is an example of a new CLI tool designed exclusively for Formula 1 -- sorry, NASCAR -- fans. It's called Live-F1, and it brings realtime race and practice data from Formula 1 events around the globe to your Linux terminal window.

Live-F1 is free software, but it depends upon (free) registration at the official Formula 1 Web site. This makes sense, because this Linux client is a replacement for the site's Live Timing feature, which requires a Java-enabled browser.

Grab the tarball with the latest release and enter the live-f1-version subdirectory once you've decompressed it. The README explains what prerequisites (development versions of the curses and neon libraries) are needed to compile it, and INSTALL explains the same thing in greater detail. Once you've done the ./configure;make;make install thing, you can execute the program simply by entering live-f1 at the command line.

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