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Ask HN: What linux desktop tools/apps boosted your productivity?
I have switched to Ubuntu 16.04 from MacOS two years ago. Compiz is one of the things helped me manage my workspace and windows which really boosted my productivity. I wonder what other tools I might be missing out.
Thank you.
- jasonhansel 8y agoI suggest: - AutoKey (key shortcuts) - Conky (desktop widgets) - lsyncd (syncing files)
- anikdas 8y agolsync looks really good. Currently I was using rsync with a custom gulp script to mimic similar functionality.
- ElCapitanMarkla 8y agoI've been using unison lately. Nice and quick over 1000s of files between OSX and Linux. A little slower when paired with Windows though
- Alan_Dillman 8y agoConky is great. For someone starting out in customising their desktop, Conky goes a long way. I used it for years till I started writing my own widgets. I was using Conky for a todo list on my second monitor, then I added another more specific todo list called "weekdo", one for notes(like how to spell certain words that consistently stymie me). After growing to four lists, each a Conky instance, I wrote a more specific purpose displayer. That was worse on resources, but a rewrite incorporating all the lists into one process was an improvement, even on Conky. But this is about Conky. Conky pretties up your desktop, displays useful information, and inspires you to take more control of your desktop. Long live Conky.
- anikdas 8y agoTo add another one of my favorite: gotop[1] (drop in replacement of htop) is really good. [1]https://github.com/cjbassi/gotop https://github.com/cjbassi/gotop
- ArtWomb 8y agoMkusb for making USB thumb drive bootable ISOs. If you want to try a lot of "flavors" it can definitely save a lot of time configuring ;)
- ChrisGranger 8y agoI'd suggest a clipboard manager. I use Glipper, but there are a lot of others.
- anikdas 8y agoI use docky as my dock and it has a clipper docklet. It's really handy.
- russdpale 8y agocopyq is very good as well.
- ElijahLynn 8y agoCopyQ is the best clipboard manager, IMO! I used to use Glipper, CopyQ crushes it!
- dhruvkar 8y agoSwitched 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 https://cerebroapp.com
- craftyguy 8y agoTmux, vim + handful of plugins, i3wm, mutt, qutebrowser. Without the ability to completely control my systems from the keyboard, I would suffer a bit hit to productivity and these applications allow me to do that.
- lgunsch 8y ago- 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 more clunky using other keys
- jessedhillon 8y agoFYI, one line change each to your bashrc and inputrc will get you vi keybindings instead of emacs
- lgunsch 8y agoThat's interesting, I never knew that. I actually use Fish shell, and with my Colemak keyboard vi keybindings need to be remapped extensively (also why I don't use vim).
- mclehman 8y agoI use another niche keyboard layout (Workman) and have never really felt the urge to rebind anything in vi(m). I can definitely see wanting to rebind the standard nav keys which causes cascading changes and can cause you to lose a lot of the mnemonic advantages of the commands. My solution to that issue is "just" alternate bindings which obsolete both the standard and vi navigation keys. At the home row, I have the arrow keys on my right hand and a "nav cluster" of my own devising (page up/down, tab left/right, workspace left/right) on the left. Definitely not for everyone, but a possible way to have your cake and eat it too.
- eric24234 8y agowhat's the change ?
- jessedhillon 8y ago
- russdpale 8y agoKDE Connector Shutter for screen shots parsec for streaming a local windows box
- zumu 8y agoRofi is pretty great. I'm also shamelessly addicted to guake (drop down terminal). I know there are more robust alternatives, but having grown up with Quake/CS, it just feels right.
- dnlsrl 8y agoI wanted to use Yakuake but it's for KDE and didn't want to install a complete DE just to use its dropdown terminal. Guake is a fairly good alternative, but I'm having an issue with it that it somehow makes title bars and top menus unclickable, which forces me to terminate it every now and then start it again.
- zumu 8y agoI have not had those issues, and I'm actually using guake with KDE atm. You might be able to get yakuake working on non-kde. What DE are you using?
- feydaykyn 8y agoThe debian/ubuntu packages were pretty outdated at some point, I had to install the latest version manually to fix a bunch of issues just after updating to 18.04
- e19293001 8y agoEmacs 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/ https://orgmode.org/ [1] - http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html
- a-saleh 8y agoSecond 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 :)
- hestefisk 8y agoI 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?
- tushartyagi 8y agoI 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-on-clipboard-to-emacs-org-mode-file-without-saving-it https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17435995/paste-an-image-...
- fikovnik 8y agoHere is a function that I use for exactly this: https://gist.github.com/fikovnik/e0fa86aea29f761b6a4ddcfda463413b https://gist.github.com/fikovnik/e0fa86aea29f761b6a4ddcfda46...
- johncoltrane 8y agoSwitching 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 patches without a single issue and all the company-provided MacBooks I've had since 2010 have been zero-maintenance.
- nwah1 8y agoI 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 you need, and the less chance for breakage. Usually if something breaks in desktop linux for me, it is because I know I was doing something non-standard. Trying to use unstable packages, custom settings, etc. Apple solves that problem by barely letting you do anything at all, thus removing the PEBKAC.
- vfulco2 8y agoWith 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.
- anikdas 8y agoHave 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.
- thisgoodlife 8y ago
- nwah1 8y agoKeePassXC has been great for password management. Redshift for blue light filtering, although KDE now has that built-in. zsh and the oh-my-zsh suite has been really helpful A bunch of cli tools are nice. Ripgrep is a super fast grep tool that comes in handy for searching inside of files... can basically search your whole filesystem at lightspeed.
- h1d 8y agoListed app seems to be only the obvious ones that has good alternatives on other OS but aren't there any that is better on Linux desktop?
- fffrantz 8y agoAlpine is absolutely amazing for managing the hundreds of emails I get everyday. Also, workrave helped with concentration by forcing me to do regular pauses.
- leeman2016 8y ago- Zim - very light note taking application - Clipit - clipboard management - i3 Desktop window manager - gave me a superb boost of productivity - Indicator Netspeed unity - live network consumption/speed indicator applet
- ayoisaiah 8y agoOff the top of my head, I'd suggest the following: - Flameshot for screenshots and annotation [1] - Albert Launcher [2] - Jumpapp for quickly launching or switching between windows [3] They are all desktop agnostic. [1]: https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot [2]: https://albertlauncher.github.io https://albertlauncher.github.io [3]: https://github.com/mkropat/jumpapp https://github.com/mkropat/jumpapp
- Symbiote 8y agoI 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...
- stevenaleach 8y ago*nix specific: tmux, clipit cross platform: jupyter-lab, vim.
- JoshCalbet 8y agoiptables. I actually block some websites by setting some rules in /etc/rc.local like: iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -m string --hex-string "|08|facebook|03|com" --algo bm -j DROP Not joking
- InGodsName 8y agoFigma for UI design.
- cik 8y agoIn addition to the usual suspects of tmux, random window managers + friends, here are the applications I have to install to function rofi - Fast, phenomenally good launcher terminator - Terminal that allows splitting, tabbing, and more importantly bonding redshift - Literally, shift my red light levels by time of day retext - I write a lot of markdown. Seeing it real-time previewed makes life significantly better for me. steam - A distraction now and then certainly helps
- tapoxi 8y agohttps://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/ https://gnunn1.github.io/tilix-web/ is a good tiling terminal emulator/terminator alternative if you're looking for something designed for GNOME 3
- akulbe 8y agoFor terminator, what is bonding? is that what allows you to send keystrokes to more than one tab simultaneously?
- remilouf 8y agoI’ve struggled for a long time with paper scraps to keep track of what I’ve been doing and read about the following alias to add in your .bashrc `alias did="vim +'normal Go' +'r!date' ~/did.txt"` Then type `did` in your terminal and write what you just did. More generally, you can get a great boost of productivity by mastering your text editor. I have a preference for Vim, but have nothing against emacs.
- ElijahLynn 8y ago* 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 splitting so much, always frustrates me to see others moving so slowly through terminal windows and tabs. bonus: I also have pane splitting to re-attach to existing SSH connection if it was split from a SSH session. I used to use tmuxinator and probably will again, more valuable if multiple projects simultaneously. * Guake/Gnome Drop Down Terminal: Terminal dropdown is just such a huge time saver. * z: jump to recent directories, https://github.com/jethrokuan/z https://github.com/jethrokuan/z * fzf: get ctrl + r history search functionality back that bash provides, also provides ctrl + o to open files in $EDITOR https://github.com/jethrokuan/fzf https://github.com/jethrokuan/fzf * copyq: Best clipboard manager evah! You NEED a clipboard manager, can't believe I went years without it, I trigger mine with ctrl + alt + c * pipe to clipboard: `<command with output> | xsel --clipboard`, wrap xsel in a `cb` abbreviation in fish for autoexpansion. `abbr -a cb xsel --clipboard` may need to install `xsel` first. * workspace tiling: I map 9 workspaces to the same grid on the keyboard with these keys + an <alt> modifier. I also assign certain applications to always auto-assign to specific workspaces: w e r s d f x c v * clock: set it to show seconds, you can easily perform loose timing way. Use `time <command>` if you are on the terminal. * timezone: if you work with a team who is in one timezone, just set it to use their timezone during working day. I made a script to toggle this back and forth easily I also display my timezone in my tray if I am toggling timezones. * Arch Linux: On previous distros I would have to futz with package sources way too much. With Arch it is the easiest and most productive ever by using the `yay` package manager/wrapper. I can type `yay -S <package name>` and 99% of the time it will be available and even automates building it from source if there isn't a binary. It just works, I will never go back. Arch has some of the best packaging out there, I will use Arch for this reason alone, it saves many hours of time. * ethernet cable: I use ethernet cabling whenever possible. Lower latency times and in video conferences you can say "not me" when the stream breaks down. Results in you not having to troubleshoot wifi. Using wires is amazing! * Jabra 410 WIRED speakerphone: one reason, hardware mute button. Don't have to fiddle through windows to see if you are on mute. Big red ring around the speakerphone shows if you are muted or not. * Screen annotations + touchscreens: The reason to use a touchscreen with linux is screen annotations. Arch + Gnome 3 works well enough with `yay -S gromit-mpx` as an alternative to Compiz Annotate. This saves time because during presentations you can communicate much more efficiently by drawing a red circle around something. You don't need a touchscreen and can use a mouse pointer, but that does slow things down, still better than no annotations though. * noise cancelling headphones: this is the best investment I have ever made. Do this. * Focus music: "hey google, play focus music" and also I purchased lifetime subscriptions for brain.fm and focus@will. I toggle between the 3. Combined with noise cancelling headphones you can get into some killer focus zones with these! * rubber ducking: similar to other posts here for marking @todos etc, which I may look into their suggestions for a CLI method. But for now I use a running Google Doc where I write it out for getting stuck and making progress. Here is an article I wrote expanding on this blurb. https://medium.com/@ElijahLynn/write-it-out-f9c74082e6ca https://medium.com/@ElijahLynn/write-it-out-f9c74082e6ca * 2-5 minute runs: Sometimes just gotta get up and run. I run around the block, it doesn't have to be long. A goal of once around the block is super good for brain health, more is better but 2 minutes is really a good start. My long-term goal is to do a 2 minute run every hour during the day. ======================================================= Here is my most recent Arch setup with most of these tools listed, it is pretty messy and I didn't document everything in there but maybe it is useful to someone, there is also a video recording of how to install Arch + Gnome 3 at the top of the document that my friend and colleague Cameron Eagans walked me through with some great discussion around UEFI & BIOS. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QtQyveacu8dgTeoy8939Ti426eifC_GqJKaVhNu0bN4/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QtQyveacu8dgTeoy8939Ti42... Gosh that was way longer than it was intended to be, original intent was just to write about `fish abbr --add` which you should switch to fish for that reason alone!!
- gitgud 8y agoShutter is a great little gui tool I use everyday, it let's you easily take screenshots or partial screenshots and mark them up before copying/saving them.
- russdpale 8y agoYeh shutter is a great application! Very easy to use and most importantly, light weight.
- frnkshin 8y agoThe one app is i3wm. People say tiling wm do not help boost productivity, but it certainly did for me -- or at least I think that it did. From hardware aspect (although it was never asked), I use a hhkb type-s with the hasu controller. You may think it's a small change, but the fact that you can remap the arrow keys to {h,j,k,l} also helps because you no longer need to stretch your arm to your arrow keys. It did cost a bit of money, but I'm happy that I have it. And aside from the arrow key remap, I also remapped other keys to help with basic functionalities.
- facorreia 8y agogitg is pretty helpful for visually checking changes before committing. I prefer it to text-more diff and use it for projects that don't require IntelliJ.
- PeOe 8y agoI use Zenkit (project management tool) to organize all my tasks and keep track of the progress. It's also available as Snap.
- Zelmor 8y agoCompiz? Are you joking? In what way could Compiz boost your productivity?
- anikdas 8y agoAll the bindings, hot-corners, expo to name a few.
- livingpunchbag 8y agoalias s='cd ..'
- zzo38computer 8y agoI 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.