For terminal, the first thing I install is Midnight Commander - dual pane file manager. midnight-commander.org
For all of my physical Linux machines - Cockpit and Cockpit-File Sharing plugin.
Desktop
Thunderbird
Firefox
Vivaldi
Gnome
Chromium I use Firefox, wife uses Chromium and My WFH job I use Chrome. Vivaldi is a backup browser, I’ve been messing around with.
QEMU/LibVirtd - So I can run a Windows VM for my old Canon Lide 60 scanner which scans clearly there, otherwise in Linux, it’s contrasted super grey for some reason.
Kopia-UI - Backup system which supports NFS Shares - set and forget type of setup.
VLC - Need I say more? Lol
OnlyOffice - Better aesthetically IMHO than LibreOffice
PDF Arranger - Works well to re-arrange pages or rotate them after scanning them in. (I self host Sterling PDF and will probably switch to that later)
I use CoreCtrl to fix my GPU’s atrocious fan curve, which is a necessity since normally it overheats to high hell. With CoreCtrl, I have a nice fan curve that makes my GPU rarely, if ever, run hotter than 70°C.
I wish it had Nvidia support. Even though I have it installed, it’s useless for me. Currently trying to find a fan control/curve tool/program that works with Nvidia GPU.
I really like Lunatask. It’s a task/habit management app kind of like Todoist, but it works better for me personally. The premium version is quite expensive, but the free one is quite okay to work with. And it’s still in development so a lot of features are missing (you can’t set a time for a task for example which I find ridiculous).
Also Ghostwriter, it’s a really nice minimalistic markdown editor. I wish it was a bit more customizable but I guess I could try emacs for that.
Yes, I’ve tried pretty much everything. Strawberry is pretty good but it doesn’t have a grid view for albums, it also shows the contents in a way that is not very intuitive imo (I want albums in publication order with original release date). I sincerely expect something new from the next Amarok in terms of intuitiveness of use, I hope the good man who is bringing it back wants to innovate something in this sense.
Cherrytree; nominally for making hierarchical lists but you can basically use it as a wiki for your entire life. You can theme it yourself too, if you think it looks too retro out of the box.
Syncthing, for keeping files synced between devices without having to use a server.
Qbittorrent, for getting files you need. Remember to install search plugins.
KeepassXC. Password manager (local, not on a server, use in combination with Syncthing).
Convertall, for unit conversions.
Calibre, for managing an ebook library, converting formats, removing DRM, transferring to ereader etc.
Rhythmbox, for music library, podcasts, internet radio.
Shotwell, for photo and video library. Easy to use, supports tags (metadata written to image files).
GIMP, for image manipulation. It’s extremely versatile, comprehensive and versatile. 3.0 is due out soon and will include non-destructive layer effects. Heavyweight piece of software, so expect a learning curve.
Ardour, for music production. Heavyweight, steep learning curve.
Flowblade for video production. Lightweight, easy to learn.
Libreoffice, desktop publishing.
Librewolf; privacy-focussed web browser.
Thunderbird; highly organisable email client.
Freetube, for watching youtube videos without all the ads and tracking. Local subscriptions and playlists, which you can export to use with Newpipe on Android. Also lets you download video and audio.
If you like the terminal also add:
ranger; file manager
newsboat; RSS feed reader
yt-dl; download videos from youtube and many other sites ;)
w3m; command line web browser. I like to use this in combination with newsboat.
LibreWolf as my browser (it’s a more secure and private version of Firefox, comes with a pre-installed adblocker and removes all the unnecessary junk) (Flatpak) with some of the following extensions:
Server-Status (GitHub) shows information about a web server like country/region (via local GeoIP database lookup), SSL certificate information and more. Good open source alternative to Flagfox.
Ptyxis (Flatpak) as my terminal. It’s optimized for containers (e.g. distrobox). foot is a pretty good alternative if you want something more minimalistic and don’t care about containers. There are countless other good options like Kitty, Alacritty, Konsole, WezTerm and many others.
Bitwarden for syncing my password database with my self-hosted Vaultwarden server (also works with their public cloud syncing option). Use KeePassXC if you prefer something entirely local.
LocalSend for sharing files on the local network (basically works like AirDrop) (also works over NetBird or Tailscale btw)
NetBird for creating a flat VPN network between my devices
KDE Connect for better integration with my phone. Also works over NetBird btw. Check out GSConnect if you’re on GNOME.
KRunner for quickly finding files or applications (Ulauncher for other desktops, rofi for window managers)
Brilliant list! Starred this to go through it in detail later.
EDIT: A good deal of overlap with me on the type of applications I already use, so looking forward to discovering other hidden gems I haven’t yet found.
I also like lutris. But it being “for games” doesn’t do it justice I think. It is basically just a wine environment manager. It advertises as being for games but it should work with just about any windows executable.
OpenBSD user, in no particular order, definitely missing some stuff: pdksh (OpenBSD) or oksh (Linux/MacOS), su, unix/posix utils (man (most important), find (second most important), apropos, awk, grep, df, du, dd, ed, etc), mg, openssh, got, heirloom-doctools/troff, bc-gh (bc calculator with a bunch of extensions), xclip, xdotool, xeyes (very important), yt-dlp (youtube-dl seems dead these days), some C compiler (clang/gcc), httpd, opensmtp, ffmpeg, libressl/openssl, pf, tmux (I prefer to use my window manager, but if I’m in tty or need to retain a shell session, tmux is useful), ping, ifconfig, traceroute, netstat, nc/netcat, unwind (or other dns server like unbound)
There’s no doubt there are a great variety of Linux packages in use.
Recently I did a CD install of Debian 12 (Bookworm) desktop with Gnome, which loads a bunch of stuff over the Net. Here are extra packages that I installed manually. The first set is used by and with an automated configuration script that I wrote, so they have to come in to begin with.
Title
Description
Purpose
info
Gnu info processor
"Config"
curl
Command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax
"Config"
dbus-x11
Simple interprocess messaging system (X11 deps)
"Config"
emacs
Editor
"Config"
gconf2
GNOME configuration database system (support tools)
“Config"
mc
Midnight Commander - a powerful file manager
"Config"
python3-iniparse
Access and modify configuration data in INI files
"Config"
python-lxml-doc
Python XML documentation
"Config"
python3-lxml
Pythonic binding for the libxml2 and libxslt libraries
"Config"
sakura
Simple but powerful libvte-based terminal emulator
"Config"
Title
Description
Purpose
"apcupsd”
“APC UPS Power Management”
“Monitor”
“artha”
“Handy off-line thesaurus based on WordNet”
“Utils”
“backintime”
“Simple backup/snapshot system”
“Utils”
“brasero”
“CD/DVD burning application for GNOME”
“Utils”
“bwm-ng”
“Small and simple console-based bandwidth monitor”
“Monitor”
“ccze”
“Robust, modular log coloriser”
“Utils”
“certbot”
"Automatically configure HTTPS using Let’s Encrypt "
“Utils”
“claws-mail-dillo-viewer”
“HTML viewer plugin for Claws Mail using Dillo”
“Mail”
“claws-mail-feeds-reader”
“Feeds (RSS/atom) reader plugin for claws mail”
“Mail”
“claws-mail-plugins”
“Claws mail”
“Mail”
“claws-mail-spam-report”
“Spam reporting plugin for claws mail”
“Mail”
“cmake”
“Cross-platform, open-source make system”
“Retroshare”
“conky-all”
“Highly configurable system monitor”
“Monitor”
“copyq”
“Advanced clipboard manager with editing and scripting features”
“Utils”
“cups”
"Common UNIX Printing System™ - PPD/driver support, web interface "
“Utils”
“dcraw”
“Decode raw digital camera images”
“Photo”
“devilspie”
“Automatically resize windows”
“Utils”
“dict”
“Dictionary client/server and a selection of dictionaries, too”
“Utils”
“dictd”
“Dictionary server”
“Utils”
“diction”
“Utilities to help with style and diction”
“Utils”
"exiv2"
“EXIF/IPTC photo metadata manipulation tool”
“Photo”
“festival”
“General multi-lingual speech synthesis system”
“Utils”
“ftp”
“Classical file transfer client”
“Utils”
“gedit”
“Popular text editor for the GNOME desktop environment”
“Editor”
“gimp”
“GNU Image Manipulation Program”
“Photo”
“git”
“Fast, scalable, distributed revision control system”
“Utils”
“gnome-audio”
“Audio files for GNOME”
“Utils”
“gnome-extra-icons”
“Optional gnome icons”
“Utils”
“gnucash”
“Personal bookkeeping and finance”
“App”
“golang”
“Go programming language compiler”
“yamn”
“hplip”
“HP Linux Printing and Imaging System (HPLIP)”
“Utils”
“hplip-gui”
“HP Linux Printing and Imaging - GUI utilities (Qt-based)”
“Graphical frontend for Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE)”
“Photo”
“zbar-tools”
“Bar Code Scanner and Decoder”
“Photo”
“zip”
“Archiver for .zip files”
“Utils”
Here are third-party packages I admire. These are not available in Debian repositories although some provide Debian-compatible repositories of their own.
Tor Browser Bundle: Anonymizing Network Browser
This is available from dist.torproject.org/torbrowser/ as a tarball. This should be unpacked and the whole tor-browser_en-US directory moved to the ~user folder. This is so that the browser can auto-update at user authority as the need arises.
RetroShare: Secure Communications with Friends
This has its own Debian-compatible repository.
metar: A Package to Parse METAR Coded Weather Reports
weeWX: Open source software for backyard weather stations.
From weewx.com/docs/debian.htm. Although a Debian package exists, doing any development practically requires that all the code be in user-space, so don’t install the package. Download it instead.
Add comment