# ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets: a personal knowledge base you can clone > Christian Lempa's cheat-sheets repository is a folder tree of command references for Linux, macOS, Windows, cloud and infrastructure tools. It is documentation to read, not software to install, and its own README warns that products change over time. **ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets** — This is my personal knowledge-base. Here you'll find code-snippets, technical documentation, and command reference for various tools, and technologies. - Repository: https://github.com/ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets - Stars: 4,831 · Forks: 1,441 - Language: Unknown - License: MIT - Published: 2026-09-23 · Updated: 2026-09-23 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/christianlempa-cheat-sheets ## What ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets actually is This is a documentation repository, not a program. The README describes it plainly: "This Repository Cheat-Sheets is my personal knowledge-base. Here you'll find code-snippets, technical documentation, and command reference for various tools, and technologies." The audience is named in the same file: IT Pros and Homelab nerds. If you are the person who forgets the exact flags for a container runtime or a firewall rule, the repository is aimed at you. The problem it solves is retrieval, not learning. Long-form explanations live on the author's YouTube channel, and the README points there for "detailed, in-depth tutorials". The repository holds the short form: the command, the snippet, the reference table. That split matters when you decide whether to use it. You will not find a from-scratch explanation of why a tool works the way it does, and you should not expect one. The repository is MIT licensed and was last pushed on 2026-08-31. There are no releases in the repository, because there is nothing to release. Content changes arrive as commits to the main branch. ## How the folder tree is organised The layout is the mechanism. The top-level entries are .github/, .gitignore, LICENSE, README.md, SECURITY.md, cloud/, infra/, linux/, macos/, misc/, tools/ and windows/. There is no index file, no manifest, no generated site, and no build step. You find a sheet by walking the tree, which is why the directory names matter more than any documentation about them. The split is by platform first and by concern second. linux/, macos/ and windows/ hold operating-system material. cloud/ and infra/ hold material for hosted services and infrastructure tooling. tools/ holds the rest, and misc/ catches what does not fit. That is a coarse taxonomy, and it will not tell you which sheet covers a specific product without looking. The README does not publish a table of contents, so the tree itself is the only map. A .github/ directory is present, which normally holds workflow and issue-template files, and a SECURITY.md is present at the root. The README does not describe what either contains, so treat them as repository plumbing rather than as user documentation. Nothing available describes a search feature, a tag scheme, or cross-references between sheets. ## Getting the repository and finding a sheet There is no package to install and no binary to run. The README gives no installation section, so the only way to get the content is to clone the repository or read it on the forge. The URL is the one the project publishes under: ```bash git clone https://github.com/ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets.git ``` After the clone finishes, change into the directory and list it. You should see the top-level entries named above, including linux/, macos/, windows/, cloud/, infra/, tools/ and misc/: ```bash cd cheat-sheets ls -1 ``` For a first real use, pick the platform you are working on and read the sheet for the tool in front of you. If you are on a Linux host, start in linux/. If your work is containers and infrastructure, start in infra/ or tools/. The repository is plain text, so your normal editor and your normal pager work on it; there is no viewer, no server and no port to open. Because it is a git checkout, keeping it current means pulling from the same remote. That is the whole upgrade path, and the README documents nothing beyond it: ```bash git pull ``` ## Where this repository stops being the right tool The README carries its own warning, and it is worth taking literally: "Be aware, products can change over time. I do my best to keep up with the latest changes and releases, but please understand that this won't always be the case." A cheat sheet records the state of a tool on the day it was written. When the tool changes a flag or a default, the sheet does not fail loudly. It just quietly becomes wrong, and you find out when the command does something unexpected. There is also no versioning to lean on. The repository has no releases, so there is no tagged snapshot that corresponds to a particular tool version, and no changelog that says which sheets were revised in which commit. If your environment is pinned to an older release of a product, you cannot ask this repository for the matching syntax. Two more boundaries are visible in the layout. First, this is one person's notes, so coverage follows that person's interests and work. A tool outside that orbit may simply be absent, and absence is not a statement that the tool is unimportant. Second, the README offers no support commitment. Contribution happens through social media, Discord, or a pull request, and there is no stated turnaround. If you need an answer with a response time attached, this is not the place to get it. ## How it compares with tldr pages and man pages The closest alternatives are tldr pages and the man pages that ship with your operating system, and the difference is one of generation and scope rather than quality. Man pages are authoritative and versioned with the tool. They are installed alongside the program, so the page you read matches the binary you run. That accuracy is exactly what this repository cannot promise, and it is also why man pages are hard to skim: the synopsis, options and exit codes are all there, and so is everything else. tldr pages sit in the middle. They are community-maintained, distributed as a client plus a set of pages, and they aim at the common invocations of a single command. The scope is per-command and the format is fixed. ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets is broader and less uniform: a sheet may cover a whole platform, a workflow, or a single tool, and the depth varies from one file to the next. It also mixes in material that is not a command reference at all, which tldr pages deliberately do not do. A practical arrangement is to use the man page or tldr page when you need the current, exact behaviour of one command, and to use this repository when you want the surrounding context: how a task is done on a given platform, or which commands tend to be used together. The two answer different questions. ## Maintenance, licence and what an upgrade costs you Maintenance here means reading commits, not installing updates. The last push was on 2026-08-31, and the repository is not archived. There are no releases and no version numbers, so there is no upgrade procedure to follow and no migration to plan. Your cost is the time to pull and re-read the sheets you depend on, plus the risk that a sheet you relied on changed without a note explaining why. That has a practical consequence for anyone thinking about forking. A fork is cheap, because the content is plain files, but a fork also freezes the content at the moment you copy it. Nothing in the repository provides a notification when an upstream sheet is corrected, so a fork silently drifts from the original unless you pull from it. The licence is MIT. In plain terms, that is a permissive licence: it allows use, copying, modification and redistribution, and it requires that the copyright notice and permission notice be preserved. This is a description of the licence text, not legal advice, and it says nothing about the terms of the individual tools the sheets document. Those tools carry their own licences, and a command reference for a product is not a licence to use that product. If you plan to republish the content, read LICENSE at the repository root rather than relying on a summary. ## Conclusion Adopt it if you want a plain-text command reference you can clone, grep and edit locally, and if you accept that it is one person's notes rather than a versioned product. Skip it if you need per-tool version guarantees, a changelog, or a support channel with a response time. Before relying on any sheet, check that its directory exists under the top-level tree (linux/, macos/, windows/, cloud/, infra/, tools/, misc/) and read the warning in the README about products changing over time. ## FAQ ### What does cheat sheet mean? In this repository the term covers short command references and code snippets collected into a personal knowledge base, rather than a single document. The README describes the collection as technical documentation and command reference for various tools and technologies. ### What should be in a cheat sheet? The repository answers this by example rather than by rule: its sheets hold code snippets, technical documentation and command references. The README points readers to the author's YouTube channel when they want detailed, in-depth tutorials instead. ### Why is it called a cheat sheet? The repository does not explain the name. It presents the contents as a personal knowledge base of snippets and command references, which is the sense in which the term is used here. ### How to use cheat sheets? Clone the repository, then look in the top-level directory that matches your platform or concern, such as linux/, macos/, windows/, cloud/, infra/, tools/ or misc/, and read the sheet for the tool you are working with. The files are plain text, so any editor or pager works. ### What is cheat sheets? It is a documentation repository, described in its README as a personal knowledge base containing code snippets, technical documentation and command reference for various tools and technologies. It is aimed at IT professionals and homelab users. ## Sources - [ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets on GitHub](https://github.com/ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets) - [Issues](https://github.com/ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets/issues) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets/blob/main/LICENSE) - [README](https://github.com/ChristianLempa/cheat-sheets/blob/main/README.md) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/christianlempa-cheat-sheets