What are some programs/tools/packages that you can't live without?
What are some programs/tools/packages that you can't live without?
Some applications I’ve not seen yet:
Terminal
ntorga.com/gzip-bzip2-xz-zstd-7z-brotli-or-lz4/
lz4 - fastest compression/decompression (several GB/s); compression is good, but not amazing; very little CPU usagezstd - very fast compression, fast decompression (few GB/s compression; ~600MB/s for decompression; better or equal compression compared to zip, depending on level)cloc <folder> - gets lines of code for a project/foldergdu <optional location> - like ncdu, but faster (written in go) - think TreeSize/WinDirStat for the terminalstat <file> - built-in application to show the modified, created, etc stats for a file.hyperfine - benchmark for binaries - run this in front of a command to have it run multiple times, and show some statistics.jpegli - great to recompress JPEG files into smaller filesizes, with only very few/minor visual effects.just - used with a Justfile in a project so I can run just to see the commands, or run just test, just clean, just … to run project-specific commands.msedit - ye olde edit.com, reborn! Feels a little bit cursed to use an MS text editor on the terminal, but it’s better for beginners than nano or micro or whatever.oxipng - lossless png compressionpngquant - lossy png compression (it forces the file to use a palette of n colors, which reduces the colors used, so it will affect your files, unlike oxipng.upx - compress binary filesvisidata - analyses csv files, and shows some stats. Like Data Wrangler for the terminaloxfmt - think “oxidized prettier” (file formatter for programmers)GUIs
Whatpulse - I’ve been tracking my keypresses since 2005. not a terminal application, unlike the rest.fsearch - Linux alternative to Everything by Voidtools. It will be a little bit different, but it does the job. mlocate package, with the sudo updatedb and locate commands, if you prefer the terminalkeepassxc - password managerspeedcrunch - best GUI calculator, IMO. Just a bar for input, and a bunch of stored results above it. Use the ans variable to use the previous answer in the current calculation, like ans*2 to multiply the previous answer. Or use variables, like x=5, y=2, x+y: 7.
Not long ago, I found myself pondering over the choice of a compression tool for backups in Infinite Ez, our self-hosted container platform that transforms a single server into a fully-fledged PaaS. Ordinarily, gzip would be the obvious choice, but I began to question whether…
upx - compress binary files
Just to be clear, the parent poster means “binary as in executable binaries”, rather than “binary as in non-text”.
mlocate
This was replaced by plocate some time back in Debian, which IIRC was generally faster. Some distros used a compatibility package for some time; you may actually have plocate installed yourself.