Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#1

Post by manaskarekar » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

Inspired by the thread about Mac OS, I'm curious what are some really well done applications for linux.

I know there will be a ton of CLI apps/tools, which are welcome, but I would love to hear some really nicely done GUI applications as well.

Sublime Text, Sublime Merge, ripgrep come to mind.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#2

Post by peterangular » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#3

Post by Aperocky » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#4

Post by ohiovr » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 12:17 AM UTC

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

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#5

Post by jasoneckert » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#6

Post by shortoncash » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

gcc

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#7

Post by brudgers » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

Darktable.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#8

Post by physicles » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

peterangular wrote: post #2

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 Communi…

I’ve been using Typora for about three years. One of my favorite pieces of software for sure.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#9

Post by nickthemagicman » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:14 AM UTC

peterangular wrote: post #2

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 Communi…

Haha, I get puzzled faces when I use nano too, but to quickly edit a file, it's actually less keystrokes than VIM. It's just not as l33T.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite Linux applications?

#10

Post by 8bitsrule » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 2:44 AM UTC

peterangular wrote: post #2

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 Communi…

Huh. I've never run into a 'Linux app' that couldn't be authenticated at install-time. Different.