Ben Chuanlong Du's Blog

It is never too late to learn.

Useful Tools in Linux

Things on this page are fragmentary and immature notes/thoughts of the author. Please read with your own judgement!

IceWalkers is a great place to find software/tools for all kinds of purposes.

Project

Server/Desktop Management

Linux Desktop Environment

Linux Package Management

Terminal Tools

Administer

Disk Maintenance

Admin Tools

Security

  1. fail2ban
  2. Tor (on-line anonymity)

Encryption

  1. gpg

Time Synchronization

  1. ntp (sync-debian)

Task Scheduling

Backup

Cloud Backup Tools

  1. Network Attach Storage (NAS)

  2. Storage Made Simple (SME)

Centralized

  1. Amazon S3

    • AeroFS can backup to Amazon S3
    • s3cmd is a command line client for Linux

  2. Dropbox

  3. TeamDrive (secure, fast)

  4. Bitcasa (security, infinite storage)

  5. Google Drive

Decentralized (private, security)

  1. BitTorrent Sync (BTSync)
Pros

  1. secure

  2. free

  3. no limit on files except the limit of your own disk

Cons

  1. beta version, not stable enough

  2. versioning is a little bit tricky

  3. no GUI version for Linux

  4. AeroFS (can use Amazon S3 as the central repository)

  5. Syncthing

Non-cloud Backup Tools

  1. rsync (1-way synchronization)

  2. rsnapshot (incremental backup)

  3. duplicity (incremental backup with encryption and compression)

  4. borg

  5. Back In Time

  6. unison (2-way synchronization, not a good solution compared to cloud backup tools)

  7. Bacula (comprehensive backup tool)

  8. BackupPC

  9. FreeFileSync (a very good synchronization software written in C++, but bundled with malware now)

File Transfer

  1. infinit (fast, secure)

  2. BitTorrent

  3. BiTorrent Sync

File Cleaning

  1. BleachBit

File Hosting

  1. Mega

Pros

  1. 50 GB free

  2. secure (encrypted before upload)

  3. 10 GB every 30 minutes free (essentially free consider currently network speed)

  4. maximum file size is only restricted by browser memory capability

  5. never expire

  6. cross-platform and command line tools available for Linux

  7. able to follow symbolic link

Cons

1. one file at a time for free account
  1. File Dropper

Pros

  1. unlimited space

  2. no bandwith limit

Cons

  1. uploaded files will be removed if they are not downloaded even once within 30 days consecutively (files belong to premium account are never removed)

  2. upload file can be at most 5 GB

  3. the cheapest plan is $1/month. really no free account, but rather just upload and keep link so not convenient for people without an premium account

    Good for people who would like to share large files and do not need uploaded files to be persistent. Or for backing up frequently changed files so that before an uploaded file is removed, another updated version is uploaded.

  4. Baidu Yun

  5. Tencent Weiyun

Network

Compress and Uncompress

Virtual Machine

  1. VirtualBox
  2. VMWare
  3. Xen
  4. KVM (requires hardware support, e.g., Intel VT-x or AMD-V)
  5. QEMU-KVM (requires hardware support, e.g., Intel VT-x or AMD-V)

Database Management System (DBMS)

Relational DBMS

  1. MySQL

  2. SQLite (embedded database)

Object/Document-oriented DBMS

  1. MongoDB
  2. CouchDB
  3. OrientDB (written in Java)
  4. UnQLite (embedded database, sounds like a good replace for SQLite)
  5. MooDB (embedded database)
  6. Kyoto Cabinet (embedded, for simple key-value data)
  7. LevelDB (embedded, for simple key-value data)

Daily Work Tools (Office Tools, etc.)

Well Supported Printers

  1. HP
  2. Brother

Pinyin Input Method

  1. Sogou Pinyin
  2. Google Pinyin
  3. Sun Pinyin

Web Browser

  1. Tor (on-line anonymity)
  2. Google Chrome
  3. Firefox/Iceweasel
  4. w3m (a powerful text-based web browser)
  5. lynx (another text-based web browser)

On-line Tools

  1. Doodle
  2. Survata (for custom surveys)
  3. Google Docs (Google Form can a simple solution to custom surveys)

Finance

  1. gnucash
  2. DocumentBurst

Password Management

Data Manipulation

  1. grep/sed/awk/cut/sort/uniq/comm
  2. pdfgrep

Search in pdf files for strings matching a regular expression. It only works on PDF files but even not text files.

  1. taggrepper - search and match tags of audio files against regular expressions

  2. crgrep - common resource grep

  3. sgrep - tool to search a file for structured pattern

  4. recoll

Personal full text search package with a Qt GUI

  1. catdoc/xls2csv/catppt

Text Editor

  1. Vim (general purpose text editor)
  2. Visual Studio Code

MS Office Alternative

  1. LibreOffice

  2. OnlyOffice

  3. Calligra Suite (KDE dependent)

  4. AbiWord (Word)

  5. gnumeric (Excel)

  6. WPS Office

Publishing Tools

  1. LaTex

Scribus

Opensource Desktop Publishing

Dictionary

  1. goldendict

  2. dict

Email Client

  1. Thunderbird (called IceDove in Debian)

  2. Evolution

  3. Claws Mail

  4. Sieve (mail filtering language)

PDF Tools

Reader/Viewer

  1. evince

  2. xpdf

  3. okular

Manipulation

  1. pdftk

Scientific Reference Management

  1. Zotero (open source, a very good one)

  2. Mendeley (2G free, social network based, good for small usage, better to use together with Zotero)

  3. ReadCube

  4. JabRef (OK but not good)

E-book library management

  1. calibre

Notes Taking

http://www.legendu.net/misc/blog/software-for-taking-notes/

Task Management

  1. XMind

  2. WorkFlowy

  3. Todoist

  4. Wunderlist

  5. Taskwarrior

Auto Typing Tools

Programming Tools

Compiler

  1. GCC

  2. Clang

Debugging Tools

  1. GDB

  2. Valgrind

  3. CUDA-Memcheck

Version Control

  1. git

Multimedia Tools

OBS Studio

OBS Studio Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording

Music Player

  1. Clementine

Screenshot

Take Screenshot Using Shutter on Linux

CD/DVD burning

GUI Tools

  1. k3b

  2. gnome baker

  3. brasero

Command line Tools

  1. xvidenc (shell script to encode DVDs to Xvid)

  2. isoinfo

  3. genisoimage (Debian) or mkisofs (other Linux)

  4. dd or cat

Video/Audio Player

  1. vlc

  2. IINA

  3. HandBrake

  4. exiftool (command line multimedia meta data editor)

  5. Exiv2 (image meta data library and tools written in C++)

Software for Editing Videos

Audio Tools

Please refer to Audio Tools for more details.

Screencast

  1. comstudio (Windows only)

Voice Control

  1. Blather

  2. Voxforge

  3. Simon

Image

  1. ImageMagic

  2. GwenView (KDE)

  3. digiKam (KDE)

  4. PIL (python image library)

  5. exiftool

Scan/OCR

  1. VueScan

  2. tesseract

  3. gocr

Charts

3-D Modelling

  1. blender

  2. freeCAD

  3. OpenSCAD

  4. Google Sketchup

  5. EQUINOX-3D

Social Tools

Teleconference

  1. Blink

  2. Skype

  3. Wire

  4. Jitsi

  5. ekiga

  6. QQ (webqq, wineqq)

Web Hosting

Server Side Scripting Language

  1. PHP

  2. JSP

Client Side Scripting Language

  1. JavaScript

Integrated Package for Web Hosting

  1. XAMPP (originaly called LAMPP)

Math Formulas in Web Pages

  1. MathJax (a successor to jsMath)

Performance Tools

Boot Performance

  1. bootchart

  2. readahead-fedora

Runtime Performance

  1. preload

  2. localepurge

Other Suggestions

  1. remove old kernels

  2. package clean-up

Web Tools

    1. JustInMind Prototyper

  2. Django

  3. Node.JS

  4. ActiveJDBC

  5. web2py

Software Host

  1. GitHub

    • no private repository for free account

  2. Bitbucket

    • unlimited private repositories for free account

  3. SourceForge

Repository Hosting Tools

  1. gitolite

  2. gitlab

Websites

  1. MileWise

  2. BTGuard

  3. http://dedalvs.tumblr.com/post/48998678919/99-life-hacks-to-make-your-life-easier

Translation

https://www.apertium.org/index.eng.html?dir=eng-cat#translation

Misc

  1. KeyMon: displays the mouse button or key being clicked/pressed, useful when you video tape your screen

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