Software that I use in Linux

Created On: 2016-07-23 Updated On: 2016-10-23

Here are software that I use often in Linux.

name area my rate my remarks
general      
firefox browser great My go-to browser. No, I still don't like chrome much, although I use it.
google-chrome browser great The device mode is much more accurate than firefox's Responsive Design View. Overall a nice browser.
VLC media player good It plays. Not a pleasant GUI to use, subtitle plugin never worked well, but that's what you got.
Audacious music player good music player with easy to use GUI. Most of the time, I just use vlc on the console now.
transmission download great BT torrent. Intuitive UI. Also supports running on a server.
ImageMagick graphic processing good Convert image formats and resize images.
7-zip archive great Easy to use.
Kodi (XBMC) media center good Like Windows Media Center. Good for home theater. Some plugins are nice. Online programs is not fast in China though.
units unit conversion great A very useful tool. You may check the Units Tool in Linux.
programming      
emacs editor great Like any good editor, it's great once you get used to it.
git version control system great Good for all textual files, not just for programming.
bugzilla bug tracking good Battle tested. Excellent backward compatibility and long term maintenance. Who wants to upgrade a BTS every month?
Jenkins continuous integration good Gets the job done. Remember to config git hooks to trigger a build automatically.
ipython w/ pandas data processing great Dealing with data and plot is so much easier and pleasant.
postgres database great When you need data safety.
redis cache great When you need cache or a fast non-critical database.
sqlite3 database great I still use it sometimes when postgres is not available.
vpuml UML diagram good The best UML diagram tool I have used. This is not free software though.
system      
debian operating system great Just use debian stable, end of story.
i3 window manager good Customization could be improved. Current feature set is good enough.
rxvt-unicode terminal good Gets the job done. Nothing fancy.
virtualbox virtualization great Easy to use GUI, acceptable performance. Well maintained.
shadowsocks network great Easy to config, easy to use. Connects you to the real internet in China.
gpg sign and encryption good Secure. Integrates well in emacs. Arcane to use in the command line.
ssh + screen sysadmin great Remote system administration should always run in screen (or tmux if you prefer that).
rsync network great All around good backup tool. I have a backup system based on rsync.
ffmpeg media converter great Very capable video converter.
aria2 download good I use it when I want to use more than 1 thread to download from a single source. Otherwise, I use wget.
mutt mail reading good Used when reading mail on a server. Yes, I agree all mail client s**ks. I plan to write a post on Thunderbird.
salt sysadmin great So much better than puppet. I use it to manage both workstation and production servers.
parted/gparted partition tool good Easy to use.
clonezilla disk tool good When I want to do nasty things on partition, this is very useful.
lftp ftp client good Supports ftp and sftp well. Support mirror a dir recursively, both for upload and download.
wireshark network good Capture and analyze network packets
CUPS printing good Support printers.
OMD monitoring good A monitoring solution based on nagios and check_mk.
smokeping network great Monitor network quality. It records packet lose and latency and plot graphs on them.
remmina network great Support Remote Desktop and VNC.
qrencode graphic great Generate QR code easily.
nginx network great My go-to web server and reverse proxy server.
samba network great Sharing files to Windows clients. User document is not as nice. But once you get it, it gets the job done.
letsencrypt w/ acme.sh network good Free SSL certs for https websites.
office      
ibus input method good Typing for non-English language.
abiword office good When I want to do simple typesetting (page size, title indentation etc)
gnumeric office good Gets the job done. Typing and cell/row resizing is not as good as MS Excel.
scribus publishing good When layout is important and have to be controlled precisely, I use it.
hledger finance soso Replaces GnuCash. I don't like the concepts, but I can't find a better tool to track money now.
old     Software that I have used before, but nowadays no longer use it.
GnuCash finance good A good UI and feature set. Unfortunately it no longer runs on newer version of debian when I stopped using it.
trac bug tracking good The default theme/design is too bad to look at daily.
Octave math and engineering good Rarely used nowadays because python has a better toolset for calculation and drawing.
Vuze (was Azureus) download good When I was using it, it's good. It became bloated when I stopped using it.
mplayer media player good Distribution for debian is poor. Compile it from source requires too many dependencies for my needs. Sometimes I got glitches or crash when rewind some video.
texlive publishing good Used when I want to write something serious or when I'm bored and want to learn tex. I get less bored nowadays.
amarok music player good I have used this player when I was using KDE in the early days. It's not bad.
k3b CD burner good Since I don't burn CDs anymore. I no longer use it.
geany editor good a lightweight editor I have used in the early days.
openbox window manager great Before I get used to i3wm, this is what I use. Openbox with clearlooks view is nice.
openvpn network good Good VPN software.
filezilla download good I still use this ftp client when I'm using Windows nowadays.
vagrant programming good local VM orchestration tool. Nowadays I use salt to manage everything, vagrant doesn't provide much value. Vagrant official box is not always good.
scim input method good For some reason, in wheezy, scim-pinyin package is removed. That's why I switched to ibus. Both SCIM and ibus is usable. But neither has great documentation.
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