What's the opposite of head? I want all but the first N lines of a file

tail --help gives the following:

  -n, --lines=K            output the last K lines, instead of the last 10;
                           or use -n +K to output lines starting with the Kth

So to filter out the first 2 lines, -n +3 should give you the output you are looking for (start from 3rd).

Assuming your version of tail supports it, you can specify starting the tail after X lines. In your case, you'd do 2+1.

tail -n +3

[mdemaria@oblivion ~]$ tail -n +3 stack_overflow.txt
CCCC
DDDD
EEEE

A simple solution using awk:

awk 'NR > 2 { print }' file.name