The Late Night Linux FamilyWhat's the best open source app or utility that no one else has heard of?
(Please note that your replies may be read out and discussed on an episode of Late Night)
Matt 
@LateNightLinux Zim Wiki. It's a FOSS note-taking/personal wiki manager that is amazing and doesn't get enough love.
Jean 🐧 🇺🇸 🏳️⚧️ 🏳️🌈@LateNightLinux
Dunno if two are allowed, but I'd say:
- Cameractrls
- - A utility for controlling aspects of your webcam
- Hidamari
- - Live wallpaper program for Linux, allowing for i.e. setting a video file as your wallpaper
(kinda like a Wallpaper Engine for Linux, if you will)
stdevel@LateNightLinux One of my favorite small tools is „ncdu“ which is a ncurses-based „du“ on steroids. Runs on all of my servers as it’s very useful for listing overall directory usage in a user-friendly manner.
CupcakeRob@stdevel @LateNightLinux wow, this is lovely!
@cupcakerob @LateNightLinux It definitely is! Using „ncdu -x“ very often to see where I’m wasting storage on my disk :)
Ateriath@LateNightLinux, @Tuba! A lovely Mastodon client.
matthew@LateNightLinux Silverbullet, which I use as a personal wiki @silverbulletmd https://silverbullet.md/
shom 🐧📷🤿🏔️🪚✊🏽@LateNightLinux I really like Kanata¹ which is a keyboard remapper. The features work the same as QMK firmware so now laptop keyboard mapping behaves the same as my split ergonomic Corne keyboard.
QMK for your laptop is my sales pitch!
Richard McWizard@LateNightLinux SageMath! https://www.sagemath.org/ (or CoCalc, if you don't consider SageMath an app)
Although I imagine lots of people in academic circles have heard about it, it's probably not well known in the general open source community. My wife uses it for maths research in combinatorics, and I used to use it a bit in my physics education until I became a software engineer.
Although I imagine lots of people in academic circles have heard about it, it's probably not well known in the general open source community. My wife uses it for maths research in combinatorics, and I used to use it a bit in my physics education until I became a software engineer.
KasTas@Qenupve @LateNightLinux yes! also, people knowing it are usually from particular geographical area :) Also, I believe that Sagemath creators did some frustrating math science assessing how broken is tend to be the math and code samples in scientific papers. Suggesting... Sagemath and it's Python interface as a solution.
Metal.Smurfsshfs
for mounting remote folders easily into the local filesystem, without needing to set up Samba or NFS first.
(I heard about it on various podcasts over the years, so couldn't really say nobody has heard of it.. :)
@LiNuXsys666 @LateNightLinux woaa, I do second this one!
tuban_muzuru
Arthur Schiwon 🌍@LateNightLinux tiempo-rs for time tracking (CLI) https://gitlab.com/categulario/tiempo-rs
ᓚᘏᗢ@LateNightLinux croc - for easily sending files securely to another person without having to do a key exchange
stfn 
@LateNightLinux not sure about the "no one else heard of" part, but those tools are awesome and not super popular, I guess:
- @forgejo a selfhostable GitHub alternative with easy config and setup
- kStars, a skymap, telescope control and astrophotography image acquisition software
- siril, advanced astrophotography editing app
@LateNightLinux heh, for years I've been puzzled how so sshfs seems so overlooked. Despite sounding kind of... intuitive. Also, wasn't it initially released for Windows?
Fink 
Chat via email, encrypted
sen@LateNightLinux mosh. It's an ssh replacement that handles intermittent connections, jobs you start on the remote machine will continue to run even if you lose connectivity. https://mosh.org/
kfe@LateNightLinux Espanso, FOSS Text Expander available for Linux, Windows and MacOS.
lothar_mLedger - nifty little program for accounting and timekeeping. All from the command line and following the Unix philosophy.
https://ledger-cli.org
lopta@LateNightLinux I tend to assume that people already know about them. cu? raidframe? wakeup?
bit101@LateNightLinux Probably some neovim plugin that does something that saves me a lot of time. https://github.com/AndrewRadev/switch.vim for example. Lets you toggle or cycle through values easily. e.g. change true to false, x to y, 1 to 0, with a shortcut. But you can do a lot more powerful stuff with it.
--verbose@LateNightLinux
Subz. A recurring expenses tracker for Android which includes neat things like cancellation periods, payment alerts, etc. I find it very useful for both things like subscriptions and bills as well as things like scheduled donations.
Subz. A recurring expenses tracker for Android which includes neat things like cancellation periods, payment alerts, etc. I find it very useful for both things like subscriptions and bills as well as things like scheduled donations.
Cyberpunk Librarian@LateNightLinux This is going to be niche as hell, but it's saved me so much work over the years. It's a Windows app, yes, but it's fully open source, released under the GPLv3 license.
It’s called the SIP Testing Tool, written by Mike Fields at Central Library Consortium in Ohio. As a systems librarian I deal with a thing called Standard Interchange Protocol version 2, aka SIP2. This protocol provides a common language between self-checkout machines at your local library and the library automation system running in the background.
Now, sometimes this protocol falls over and I need to get into a public library's database and production server to see what might be wrong. With this tool, I can send and receive communications just like a self-checkout machine and see how the library's server responds. It provides a readout of the messages (or lack thereof) traveling between the systems and, in minutes, I can usually nail down where the problem might be and fix it.
And then everyone at the library can check out their materials again!
ZS@LateNightLinux Veyon. It's a classroom management program, used by a teacher to view and/or control student's computers. It's using VNC in the background. I use it on a mix of Windows and Linux in a training environment. https://veyon.io
sbi@LateNightLinux f-droid.org, hands down.
Huubje@LateNightLinux Topgrade is my new favourite. It upgrades everything on my system with one command. My distro, my containers, Nix, DoomEmacs, NeoVim, cargo, pip, node... Can't stop gushing.
https://github.com/topgrade-rs/topgrade
https://github.com/topgrade-rs/topgrade
Daniel Melzak@LateNightLinux LocalSend https://localsend.org for easily sharing files/folders and sending text over a LAN or VPN.
Lyndon Lapierre@LateNightLinux huge fan of byobu! It's a terminal multiplexer a-la tmux. I never got along well with tmux proper, but byobu and I are a good fit.
produnis
Klara ❤️@LateNightLinux GNU Octave helped me in some math classes. I love having a FOSS implementation of Matlab which integrates really well with the other tools I use, like Emacs with org-mode to generate nice documents, but Emacs is a whole other thing and it's also a lot more known.
Ken Fallon (PA7KEN, G5KEN)
Michael Boelen@LateNightLinux
Recently discovered the 'nvme' tool, for retrieving disk information (for NVMe drives). As SSD's only increase in numbers, it could be good to know about.
And some self-promotion, as many people still don't know it: Lynis, a configuration checker / security scanner, made in shell script.
ShaadraStretchly is a fantastic break reminder app. Simple intuitive UI. Helpful tips. Helps prevent all sorts of health issues from sitting down for too long
Daniel@LateNightLinux classifier, perfect for sorting your download folder every once in a while: https://github.com/bhrigu123/classifier
cameronbosch 
@LateNightLinux Tokodon or Tuba, both Mastodon clients; Tokodon is Qt, Tuba is GTK. Both have their place imo.
stig atleFor me - it's #snac2 - https://codeberg.org/grunfink/snac2
"A simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance written in portable C"
Others use it, but it's often brought up when people are looking for a easy way to host activitypub instance.
"A simple, minimalistic ActivityPub instance written in portable C"
Others use it, but it's often brought up when people are looking for a easy way to host activitypub instance.
Miguel BeltranOctoPrint is a must-have for 3D printers. It's a tool that runs as website, and can control your 3D printer using direct firmware messages.
Converts any cheap 3D printer into a smart one, you only need a Raspberry Pie or similar connected to it.
digitalfox@LateNightLinux Serious answer first: vidir
Edit directories and filenames in any text editor, making it much easier to bulk rename and move.
~/.bashrc: alias vidir='VISUAL="kate --block" vidir'
For fun: Microsoft PowerToys.
It gets me a bit closer to Linux desktop comforts (e.g. always on top) on my work Windows 11 laptop.
vandys@LateNightLinux "Rawhide" ("rh") is a C-like syntax find utility. I have kept it alive over all the years since it first came out in comp.sources.unix on Usenet:
https://sources.vsta.org:7100/rh/index
For instance, C source bigger than 10k:
rh -e '"*.[ch]" && (size > 10K)'
C source or Makefiles modified more than a week ago:
rh -f -
("*.[ch]" || "[Mm]akefile") && (mtime < (NOW - 7*days))
(For longer things, it'll accept the code on standard input, or from a file.)
https://sources.vsta.org:7100/rh/index
For instance, C source bigger than 10k:
rh -e '"*.[ch]" && (size > 10K)'
C source or Makefiles modified more than a week ago:
rh -f -
("*.[ch]" || "[Mm]akefile") && (mtime < (NOW - 7*days))
(For longer things, it'll accept the code on standard input, or from a file.)
@LateNightLinux
BTW, if you want to look at a truly impressive SW creative output:
http://litcave.rudi.ir/
BTW, if you want to look at a truly impressive SW creative output:
http://litcave.rudi.ir/
oxo