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This is the fifth in our series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems. The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. inxi is a Perl script that interrogates your system.
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Linux has lots of terminal emulators. What distinguishes Alacritty from the vast majority of terminal emulators? It differentiates itself by offering GPU-acceleration combined with a minimal feature set.
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This is the third in our series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems. The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. pet is a simple command-line snippet manager. The software is written in the Go programming language.
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This is the second in our series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems. The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. gtop is an open source system monitoring utility written in JavaScript.
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This is the first in a series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems. The series will examine both graphical and text based open source utilities. The first tool under the spotlight is ps_mem, a small utility that reliably reports how much memory is consumed by an application.
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Linux is well endowed with graphical file managers with tons of original creations together with fork upon fork of GNOME Files. Polo File Manager is not a fork of GNOME Files nor any other established file manager. This original creation is written in the Vala programming language.
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calcurse is an open source, text-based calendar and scheduling application. The software keeps track of events, appointments and everyday tasks. The software is lightweight, fast and reliable. It’s designed for the console or terminal, locally or on a remote machine.
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In the field of system administration, Linux has bags of graphical file managers. However, some users prefer managing files from the shell, finding it the quickest way to navigate the file system and perform file operations. This is, in part, because console based file managers are more keyboard friendly, enabling users to perform file operations without using a mouse, and make it quicker to navigate the filesystem and issue commands in the console at the same time.
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Irrespective of the operating system used, the text editor is one of those quintessential applications for many users. A text editor is software used for editing plain text files. Text editors are used to write programming code, change configuration files, take notes, and more. For this feature, we wanted to select alternative text editors which are definitely worth trying but may have been missed given that they receive less coverage in Linux publications, and are not included or installed by default in many Linux distributions.
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bat is a drop-in replacement for the cat command adding advanced syntax highlighting and Git integration to show file modifications. It’s a really useful utility that is a massive leap up from cat. bat’s written in the Rust programming language.
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I love working with the command line. Seriously, I think there’s hardly anything more productive and versatile for a software developer than the terminal. Maybe it’s the hacker in me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a heavy user of graphical applications, but the terminal will always have a special place.
I’ve recently come across a command-line tool that’s right up my street. It’s called googler, an open source tool to Google from the command-line. It’s written in Python, so that ticks another box for me. googler isn’t affiliated to Google in any way.
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youtube-dl is a cross-platform, open source, command-line program to download videos. Its name belies the fact it supports tons of streaming sites besides YouTube. I’d never heard of half of them.
The software is written in the Python programming language and needs the Python interpreter (2.6, 2.7, or 3.2+).
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wego is another gem of a terminal application. It’s open source weather software written in the Go programming language and designed for the terminal. It displays the weather in a variety of visually attractive ways. It’s a lightweight way to keep an eye on the weather without requiring a web browser. The information is SSL-encrypted for transmission to the local computer.
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FreeType is a software font engine that is designed to be small, efficient, highly customizable, and portable .
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The desktop is full of eye candy. It enhances the visual experience and, in some cases, can also increase functionality of software. But it also makes software fun. Working on the command-line does not have to be always serious. If you want some fun on the command-line, there are lots of commands to raise a smile.
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