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Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

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Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#31

Post by anikdas »

vfulco2 wrote: post #26
nwah1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I detest Apple but understand your perspective. However, linux has improved over time for desktop use, and more things have moved to the web. So really I feel like I rarely leave the browser. And if I do, it is just to a text editor or IDE. Having a lightweight setup eliminates a lot of problems. I try to install almost nothing, honestly. The less you have installed, the less attack surface you have, the less updates…

With weird Atom issues now (on Ubuntu 18.04 I can't install or update my packages), would love if anyone had a good browser based IDE service which is cheap and private.

Have you tried visual studio code? I have replace all my IDEs (Pycharm, WebStorm) with vscode and never looked back.

There are some issues if I am nitpicking but overall the experience is just outstanding.

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#32

Post by hestefisk »

a-saleh wrote: post #23
e19293001 wrote: post #16

Emacs org-mode[0] From the website's description: Org mode is for keeping notes, maintaining TODO lists, planning projects, and authoring documents with a fast and effective plain-text system. I just copied some of the set-up from here[1] [0] - https://orgmode.org/ [1] - http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html

Second emacs org-mode. I use almost nothing out of it. I have the default spacemacs configuration. I literaly just write bullet lists and cycle TODO and DONE states on them. Still the best todo-manager :)

I tried getting into org-mode and leave OneNote. Had to give up at the end of the day due to the lack of image / rich content support. I find it incredibly useful to be able to paste rich content into OneNote and then write work tasks around it. Is there any such option for emacs?

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#33

Post by anikdas »

dhruvkar wrote: post #8

Switched around the same time as well from MacOS. I really missed Spotlight. A suitable alternative I use on my Lubuntu 16.04 machine: https://cerebroapp.com

This is really nice. I was looking for something like this for sometime now.

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#34

Post by Symbiote »

I mostly use the command line, so Zsh and its extensive support for tab completion is the most important thing.

rsyn^I e.o^I:/va^Iw^I/ ./ -av --prog^I

autocompletes to

rsync example.org:/var/www/ ./ -av --progress

with alternatives listed if I press tab sooner (e.g. --protocol, --protect-args are shown with the purpose of those flags).

On a local filesystem,

ls /v/w/h/i^I

autocompletes to

ls /var/www/html/index.html

The non-default shell tool I use most often is "jq", a JSON processor. I can interact with a REST API, and answer a lot of one-off queries just in the shell.

I should probably write a tab-completion module for our REST API...

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#35

Post by tushartyagi »

hestefisk wrote: post #32
a-saleh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second emacs org-mode. I use almost nothing out of it. I have the default spacemacs configuration. I literaly just write bullet lists and cycle TODO and DONE states on them. Still the best todo-manager :)

I tried getting into org-mode and leave OneNote. Had to give up at the end of the day due to the lack of image / rich content support. I find it incredibly useful to be able to paste rich content into OneNote and then write work tasks around it. Is there any such option for emacs?

I had the same frustration with org when I started, which has since disappeared and I keep working with saving the screenshots and linking them to my docs. :|

Anyhow, some time ago I came across a blog post where the author wrote some elisp just to copy the stuff from clipboard, save it, link it to the buffer. I don't have the link handy, but maybe this SO answer might help you:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17435995/paste-an-image-...

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#36

Post by tushartyagi »

lgunsch wrote: post #11

- i3 window manager - I just couldn't go back now. Over the course of the last 5 years I have saved time and made window management much less painful. - Parcelite clipboard history - very useful for various reasons. It's such a basic tool for me now I don't know how people live without one. Not a tool, but for any shell work learning the readline key bindings is a good time saver: Ctrl+a/e/n/p/b/f. It's just so much…

+1 for i3. I have a 13" laptop as my primary driver and using i3 is so much faster & convenient on such a small screen. Though I have made 2 changes to my workflow to get better out of it:

- I use i3 inside XFCE. This allows me to use the xfce launcher, status bar, tray icons and other goodies, e.g. adding external monitor pops open the display properties, volume bar is available anytime. All this saves me from binding buttons & doing other changes in my i3 config.

- Since Win+{1,2,...0} (buttons which change workspaces in i3) are now hardwired in my brain, I have arranged the icons on the taskbar of my Windows-10 machine to what I have in i3.

Win+1 is assigned to Emacs on i3, so that's the first icon on my windows taskbar.

Win+2 -> shell/git bash

Win+3 -> Thunar/Windows Explorer

Win+4 -> Firefox/Firefox

Win+7 -> Anki/Anki

This saves a lot of brain cycles, as my Windows workflow is also a bit like what I usually use on Debian.

Last week I try using EXWM but wasn't able to make it work as per my expectations, so switched back to i3, but EXWM is definitely a TODO on my list.

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#37

Post by thisgoodlife »

anikdas wrote: post #31
vfulco2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With weird Atom issues now (on Ubuntu 18.04 I can't install or update my packages), would love if anyone had a good browser based IDE service which is cheap and private.

Have you tried visual studio code? I have replace all my IDEs (Pycharm, WebStorm) with vscode and never looked back. There are some issues if I am nitpicking but overall the experience is just outstanding.

Does vsc have good Django support?

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#38

Post by mikenew »

qalmakka wrote: post #27
johncoltrane wrote: post #17

Switching back to Mac OS X is what really boosted my productivity as it allowed me to forget all about constant fiddling, broken drivers, breaking updates, inconsistent UX/UI, amateurish applications, etc. My Ubuntu box (an Ubuntu-approved Dell tower IIRC) required constant attention and ultimately died after two years while my mid-2011 Mac Mini went through 4 major Mac OSX/MacOS versions and countless security patch…

I've been using every major os (but mostly GNU/Linux and FreeBSD as my main desktop systems since 2007), and I have to say that I do not share your experience. I've had the same Arch install since they have launched on x86_64 (so quite a while ago) that I just rsync around from one system to another without no fuss or issue. It's only a matter of knowing what you're doing and what the best tool for the job actually i…

Can you share that script or explain a little on how to do that? I assume you cant just `rsync -r /` and you'd have to ignore certain things like `/dev` and `/proc` or whatever.

Re: Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?

#40

Post by anikdas »

thisgoodlife wrote: post #37
anikdas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried visual studio code? I have replace all my IDEs (Pycharm, WebStorm) with vscode and never looked back. There are some issues if I am nitpicking but overall the experience is just outstanding.

Does vsc have good Django support?

yes. I have been using it specifically for Django. You need to install the official python extension though.
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