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Ask HN: What useful Linux (Ubuntu) software should more people be aware of?

by deepsy on 7/21/17, 6:34 PM with 30 comments

• by nickmancol on 7/21/17, 8:58 PM

  GNU parallel

  its a super useful tool to execute tasks using all cores of your machine. A simple example https://vidanp.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/paralelizando-en-lin...

• by fphammerle on 7/24/17, 11:55 AM

  In case you haven't yet: Set up an automatic backup system.

  If you prefer a graphical user interface consider backintime. https://www.howtogeek.com/110138/how-to-back-up-your-linux-s...

  Otherwise check out duplicity. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DuplicityBackupHowto

  Duplicity supports a bunch of protocols / target services (SFTP, dropbox, google drive, amazon S3 ...)

  Duplicity uses asymmetric encryption (via gnupg) so the backup commands can be run unattended. (Your private key is not required for encryption during backup)

• by type0 on 7/23/17, 12:23 AM

  You could add PPA for VS Code on Ubuntu, you should try rsync (cli) or grsync (gui) and get Meld for diffs. Shutter for screenshots, Parcellite for clipboard history, Caffeine to inactivate the screensaver. Also you could get a lot of task specific software via so called snaps or package your tools own with snapcraft.

• by mobitar on 7/21/17, 10:20 PM

  Standard Notes :) It's an encrypted notes app I work on. Available on Linux and almost every other platform. https://standardnotes.org.

• by grover_hartmann on 7/22/17, 5:22 PM

  * systemd-nspawn - aka. chroot on steroids -- for all your container needs -- I use this a lot for all my development, for trying new programs, for games, etc.

  * RetroArch - for all your emulation needs in one package.

  * ripgrep - better and faster than ag (The Silver Searcher).

  * mpv - very nice video player, it can also be used together with youtube-dl for streaming from various websites, including youtube, etc.

  To site admins: stop marking my comments as dead for no good reasons, my suggestions are valid.

• by steven_braham on 7/22/17, 12:02 PM

  Franz: http://meetfranz.com/

  It's a cross-platform messaging client that combines, Whatsapp, Facebook chat, Slack etc. into one application.

• by sharmi on 7/21/17, 6:59 PM

  Tunesviewer to access the university courses available on iTunes. It allows you to choose which videos to download and you can watch it through tunesviewer itself or your favorite media player.

  https://github.com/rbrito/tunesviewer

• by Faaak on 7/21/17, 8:14 PM

  GNU/units

  Its a wonderful CLI app when you calculate things with units.

  Eg: You have: (1000W * 5 hour)/(24V100A) You want: min 125

  Or: You have: 10 km * 6L/100km * 1.3 EUR/L You want: USD * 0.837486

  You should try it !

• by fphammerle on 7/24/17, 11:31 AM

  If you like vim or other console applications with vi-like key bindings I'd would recommend taking a look at http://ranger.nongnu.org/

  Ranger is an highly customizable file manager that can be controlled by using the keyboard only.

  File management (searching, copying, moving, renaming...) takes considerably less time since I switched from windows-explorer / nautilus / nemo to ranger.

  I can't imagine going back.

  Getting started with ranger: https://github.com/ranger/ranger/wiki/Official-user-guide

• by manaskarekar on 7/23/17, 2:42 PM

  The following suggestion is definitely not the most useful, but really nice to have.

  If you're feeling adventurous, you could experiment with different window managers, such as bspwm, awesomewm or i3.

  Check out some examples in https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

  Here's a good demo of bspwm https://github.com/windelicato/dotfiles/blob/master/why_bspw...

• by Ag0s on 7/21/17, 8:12 PM

  It all depends on what you do with your computer. For one I am a stats nerd so I tend to have Conky running.

  OpenOffice or Libre office; for all your Office needs, it can also output to Microsoft formats.

  Screen; for multi terminal windows within one terminal. Also very handy when working remotely.

• by more_corn on 7/21/17, 10:28 PM

  If you don't already you should get familiar with Aptitude (apt-get). There's nothing like hopping into the command line and immediately installing the piece of software you want.

  I like the Clementine music player.

  Being able to hop into the command line to process text is neat. You might want to do a toutorial on grep, awk and sed.

  Gimp is nice for photo manipulation, I use Inkscape for vector graphics.

  Opera is a nice second browser (chrome is a memory hog) it also has built in vpn and Adblock.

• by 12s12m on 7/24/17, 9:12 AM

  For a person who is initially starting with Linux. I'd suggest you to get familiar with the terminal. I'd also ask what your primary use case is. If you are a software developer vs code is a great editor to download.

• by jrader on 7/21/17, 10:22 PM

  Riot: End-To-End encrypted chat system the runs on Matrix. The idea behind Matrix is to connect different protocols through "bridges".

  Matrix is federated (I suppose XMPP is federated too). You can send an email from Gmail to Yahoo, Outlook to Protonmail, etc.

• by se7entime on 7/22/17, 4:51 AM

  Nextcloud

• by Rjevski on 7/23/17, 12:05 PM

  "Linux" "user experience"

  Good luck.