
Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications? - manaskarekar
Inspired by the thread about Mac OS, I&#x27;m curious what are some really well done applications for linux.<p>I know there will be a ton of CLI apps&#x2F;tools, which are welcome, but I would love to hear some really nicely done GUI applications as well.<p>Sublime Text, Sublime Merge, ripgrep come to mind.
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Aperocky
For all cli apps, the importance of cli itself can't be understated. While
there are only a few cli programs available to ALL unix users
(grep/ps/awk/sed/xargs/etc), the value of the pipe are one of the defining
features of CLI that amplify any program made to work in CLI.

A command I often run: `ps aex | grep $common_denominator | awk '{print $1}' |
xargs kill` to deal with multiprocess testing runs demonstrate this well. The
pipe character is what uniquely enabled unix shells to be the great software
it is that GUI have almost no real way to replicate.

~~~
kbr2000
As Awk is a pattern-matching language, you can simplify it to something like
this:

    
    
      ps aux |awk '/what/ {print "kill " $2}'
    

This will give you a list of kill commands you can review, before piping to
|sh to shake off those processes :)

And when what you try to do sequentially might take too long, you can consider
throwing GNU Parallel [1] in the pipemix!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_parallel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_parallel)

------
folkhack
OS: Debian 10 + XFCE

Terminal: highly-customized Terminator bound to F1 + XFCE Terminal for
"floating" instances

Text/Programming: Sublime Text, Intelij IDE, nano (yeah yeah bring your hate
vim users - I know it well and I'm not a fan), Meld

Markdown/docs: Typora (TRY THIS OUT IT'S AMAZING.)

Browsing: Chrome, Chromium, FF, Brave (in that order); Postman for API work,
Charles Proxy for reverse-engineering work

Communication: Hangups (CLI), Discord

Containers/Virtualization: Docker, VMWare Workstation (I run a full Win10 LTSB
underneath with all quick-access to my Adobe Creative Suite, saves time not
having to switch to the MBP)

Transfer: Qbittorrent, Filezilla

Misc: Remmina for RDP, Kazam for screen recording, pgAdmin4 for working with
my Postgres DBs, ncspot (CLI) for Spotify client; KeePass2 for password
management in a file-based DB; GParted for partitioning

Ninja edit: Sublime Merge looks amazing... I will be trying this out ASAP.

~~~
SanderSantema
As an open-source alternative to typora I can suggest Marktext
[https://github.com/marktext/marktext](https://github.com/marktext/marktext)
which I believe is on par with typora features. Don't be alarmed by the fact
that it's electron, it's pretty fast either way. And as far as I know typora
is electron based too.

~~~
slipwalker
+1 for mark-text

------
teddyc
Trying to name some more obscure ones that I love.

Tizonia is a CLI music player that can play music from your Google Music
library. I like it bc I don't have to use a browser.

Pianobar is a CLI client for Pandora, but I can run this on a Mac too so not
sure if it counts. Same no browser required benefit.

I love CLI music players bc they help you extend battery life vs browser
based.

Gpaste is a clipboard manager. It even stores images copied to the clipboard.

Not sure if it counts but when I do a rectangle select screenshot in Ubuntu,
it puts it in the clipboard (instead of putting a file on the desktop like Mac
does) and then I can just paste it in the Jira ticket / GitHub pull request /
Slack / etc.

Probably a bit more that deserve mention that I am not considering right now.

~~~
mrtcve
Image output destination is configurable on Mac. Cmd + Shift + 5, then it's
under options in the bar. I don't recall all the options but it's at least
file/clipboard.

~~~
SanderSantema
⌘⇧5 (CMD + Shift + 5) doesn't do anything on my macOS 10.13.6 system, ⌘⇧⌃4
(CMD + Shift + Ctrl + 4) is the default shortcut to take a rectangle
screenshot and store it in the clipboard.

~~~
runjake
⌘⇧5 was introduced back in 10.14.0 Mojave.

------
dafsdfsd
flameshot for screenshots -
[https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot](https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot)

almost everything is perfect.

~~~
vanous
Amazing, thank you!

------
nextos
The only 3 GUI applications I use regularly are Emacs, Firefox and XTerm
(which, like Emacs, has amazingly low latency). All via a tiling window
manager (StumpWM).

I also use Signal Desktop, which is a rather plain Electron app.

For some imaging tasks, GIMP and Inkscape are great. GIMP gave birth to GTK,
one of the two major Linux GUI toolkits.

Since the desktop ecosystem is very fragmented, I don't think there are any
great GUI applications in Linux. On Macs, things are declining now too. A lot
of the GUI innovation is happening on mobile.

In Linux, niceties come from CLI and whole OS, like Nix.

------
usr1106
I have used emacs since before Linux and window systems existed. Emacs is a
small windows manager like it is nearly everything else. Nowadays I only use a
tiny fraction of its functionality, because I do run a window manager and a
web browser. Still emacs is one of the first programs I install on every
system. On embedded systems where emacs is not feasible I try to get remote
editing via TRAMP
[https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode)
working.

~~~
dTal
Does TRAMP mode offer any advantages to sshfs?

~~~
snackematician
\- 1 less step (just open the remote file directly, rather than running
"sshfs" and then opening the file)

\- If you execute shell commands from emacs -- these will be executed on the
remote machine when editing thru tramp

\- Tramp is not limited to ssh, but also allows emacs to access files in
docker containers, as different users (e.g. root), in S3/GDrive/etc via the
rclone backend, etc.

------
weitzj
Clipboard Manager: copyq

Also for Windows and Mac. Gives you great sanity for all the clipboards,
clipboard history. Fuzzy search in clipboard history

Has a GUI and CLI

------
manaskarekar
Baobab: Disk usage Analyzer
[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Baobab](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Baobab)

Atril: Pdf Viewer, forked from Evince from the Gnome 2 days IIRC.

Base 16 Colors:
[https://github.com/chriskempson/base16](https://github.com/chriskempson/base16)

Unetbootin/TuxBoot: Creating bootable drives.

gnome-do: Alfred/Spotlight (MacOS) like quicklauncher. Used to use this but
now I've just defaulted to using Alt+F2 (remapped to Super + Space keys) to
launch apps. [https://do.cooperteam.net](https://do.cooperteam.net)

Zim : "A desktop wiki" [https://zim-wiki.org](https://zim-wiki.org)

------
mackrevinack
syncthing, sublime text and marktext would be my favourites, but you can get
them on every other platform so I don't really think of them as Linux apps

some of my fav linux only apps would lutris for managing your steam and gog
library from a single gui

neofetch is a nice way to get a fancy readout of your system specs
[https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch](https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch)

also just reading about ansible the last few days and i can see that becoming
an instant fav for quickly setting up my computers. if I can get my head
around it that is

------
ohiovr
Blender 2.8 is a work of art. ffmpeg is terrific. Pretty happy with cinnamon
desktop.

------
jamesponddotco
GNOME Browser offers an extraordinary browsing experience, and most people
seem to ignore it — probably because it lacks extension support, which I don't
really care about.

Being part of the GNOME project is also follows the GNOME design and maintain
consistency with the rest of the desktop environment — a must for me.

Aside from that, I mostly like applications that follow the GNOME HIG, like
GNOME Terminal, Geary, Polari, and Fractal.

My favorite text editor after vim is still Gedit, and it is a shame I can't
use it on macOS ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
flukus
Two things that keep me away from gnome browser. 1. The tab handling is awful,
would be great if they added vertical tab support. 2. Like firefox, it doesn't
play with dark desktop themes, you end up with text areas with black text on a
black background.

------
PhilippGille
SmartGit

It wasn't mentioned here yet, and having used GitEye on Linux before and
SourceTree on Windows, and seeing coworkers use GitKraken, I think SmartGit is
by far the best Git GUI client of them.

I know the Git CLI is popular, but most people I've seen begin to struggle
with everything beyond a simple pull and push. With a Git GUI client things
like squashing commits, interactive rebases, 3-way merges etc. are
discoverable and intuitive. No reading of the documentation required.

------
usr1106
Text based diff is fine for basic use cases. When the results are too
confusing to grasp what really has changed or I want 3-way diff meld can do
wonders. Unfortunately it does not scale well and chokes on huge files (like
Yocto build logs). Sometimes I use kdiff3. Wasn't there a 3rd one? Obviously I
haven't used it for a long time, because I can't remeber it now.

------
jasoneckert
If I had to choose one application as my favorite, it'd have to be xbill. I
can't explain why. And I'm not sure I'd want to.

------
virtualmic
ranger [1] is not mentioned yet. I had never used a console based file manager
prior to starting using this 3 months back and I have stopped using Dolphin (I
am on KDE) now.

[1] [https://ranger.github.io/](https://ranger.github.io/)

------
SanderSantema
There are quite a lot of KDE apps which aren't that well known which together
cover a large swathe of desktop usage and are quite nice.

Most of them are here:
[https://kde.org/applications/](https://kde.org/applications/)

------
teddyc
Docker runs native. You get instant file sync.

On Mac my options are dinghy or docker-sync, both of which drive me insane by
either being too slow (former) or not syncing files fast enough or good enough
(latter).

This is probably the number one reason that I love Linux for development these
days.

------
vanous
Freecad and Meshlab for 3D editing. KeepassXC for password management. Gnome
Shell extensions: \- KdeConnect (phone sync/remote access) \- Argos (script
based utilities for top bar)

------
gitgud
Shutter is my favourite screen shot tool, quick selection of content and easy
mark-up

Kazzam is a simple (tiny) screen capture app, which does one thing and does it
well.

------
inkstain
Some of my favorites already spoken for: but +1 for SublimeText with
SublimeMerge and Typora. Also cannot do without SecureCRT and SecureFX

------
gradschool
sox - girlfriend teaches a dance class and needed a slower version of some of
the music; she was impressed as all get-out that sox could slow the tempo
without lowering the pitch (using fancy Fourier math)

------
ddtaylor
Krita and Kdenlive are both great.

------
weishigoname
I think packages management tools, like apt, dpkg, yum, dnf, are pretty
useful.

------
brudgers
Darktable.

------
sebelk
VNote an excelent app to taking notes

------
snacksnack
Apps from KDE are great. Dolphin is awesome.

------
ajflores1604
KDE connect

------
yellow_lead
calibre is a great app for reading EPUB, PDF, etc

------
sebelk
vim vim and lastly vim

------
billconan
QtCreator

------
sunstone
Gnumeric

------
shortoncash
gcc

------
sharma_pradeep
terminal

------
raghava
bat (just a better cat)

nl

pigz

parallel

bc

paste

ministat

httpie

nc

GUI: stellarium, conky

There are definitely more. These are what I could remember now.

