Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–96 of 96 posts

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

#91

Post by stuntkite »

mickael-kerjean wrote: post #75
stuntkite wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a ton of writing and system description. I've got kit in Illustrator, I've bought tools on the mac like Scrivener[0] and Scrapple for writing fiction and technical documentation. I can really move with Omnigraffle. I've bridged that gap with writing my own tools in Python with JS web display layers. I am a competent developer in a few languages and I have known about emacs and org-mode for going on a decade…

> "how to not quit using emacs" would be greatly appreciated. Emacs kinda feel like a weird animal when getting started but that's just muscle memory. The best way to have it stick is to get a better understanding of its power. I wrote a 5 episode tutorial series that should get you on the right path: https://mickael.kerjean.me/2017/03/18/emacs-tutorial-series-...

Very cool! I just skimmed the series and sat with Ep1 a bit. I will work through it this coming week and see how it lands.

I like the format. Thanks!

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

#92

Post by zzo38computer »

I mostly use the command line. I use Heirloom-mailx for email, i3 for window management (although I wrote my own program for the status bar), vim for text editing, just the shell commands for file management, xterm for terminal emulation, xclip for clipboard management, SQLite for database management, and I wrote my own programs for screen capture and many other things. I do not have a launcher menu; I just start all programs from xterm.

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

#93

Post by tuananh »

wasted_intel wrote: post #58
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…

Counter-anecdote: I've been running an Arch install for 2+ years with zero problems. Picking hardware that has direct kernel support will save you a bunch of headaches. Also, a rolling release distro, which you'd think would be less stable, provides better hardware support as the kernel and firmware packages are much more recent (not to mention libraries/build dependencies). Personally, I'd never go back to a fixed-r…

> Picking hardware that has direct kernel support

that's headache for me

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

#94

Post by jessedhillon »

eric24234 wrote: post #57
jessedhillon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, one line change each to your bashrc and inputrc will get you vi keybindings instead of emacs

what's the change ?

bashrc:

    set -o vi
inputrc:

    set editing-mode vi
Now bash and anything using readline will use vi key bindings. This Just Works for most of the common cli tools, e.g. the python shell and psql, but there are exceptions. In the past, the mysql client hasn't respected these settings, and there's also a node library called vorpal that is reinventing readline, poorly and for no obvious reason.

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

#96

Post by anikdas »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #66

* Fish shell: Specifically, its abbreviation feature. `abbr --add word phrase`. e.g. `abbr --add g git`, then I don't have to deal with autocomplete support for non-native command names as it literally expands to git after I type it followed by a space or return. It also allows for faster throw-away function editing and saving if you want to keep it. `function`, `funced`, `funcsave`, `functions` * Tmux: Use pane spli…

Really appreciate for taking the time to answer my question.

I use zsh myself. Have not tried fish yet but only heard good things about it.

Also, regarding the pipe to clipboard, I liked the 'pbcopy' command on Mac. So, right now I have added an alias pbcopy='xclip -selection clipboard'. It's really handy.

Post reply on HN