Useful Software

[Vibex]

), I've heard some special things about Gentoo (like kernel compiling!), but some people love it.

Another tip to make migrations easier: install anything that can't be installed via your package manager (e.g., IntelliJ) into one directory. I put them all in /opt. Makes it a lot easier to keep track of the programs I have installed that aren't managed by apt.

I have actually never compiled my kernel from scratch. Thats a step I'm not prepared to take yet. But Gentoo (well Funtoo specifically) is a really good learning tool in my mind. You just need to be determined. Before Funtoo I had installed ubuntu, mint, and crunchbang, but I never found them interesting. I always thought why not just use windows. But then I tried funtoo, and everything became fascinating. Everyone interested in computers should do it at some point.

[iri]

well, building a custom kernel nowadays is much less important than it was in the 90's. i can't remember doing so since, like, 2006.

[IvanIvanovich]

Your musicplayer is remarkably similar to my musicbee defaults. It more or less comes this way, I just moved some things around and hid some elements I don't find useful at all. Don't need to really install anything additional and spend a lot of time configuring.

[HoffmanMyster]

Your musicplayer is remarkably similar to my musicbee defaults. It more or less comes this way, I just moved some things around and hid some elements I don't find useful at all. Don't need to really install anything additional and spend a lot of time configuring.
(Attachment Link)

Is this in response to me or someone else who posted? 

[MOZ]

Musicbee, xyplorer, launchy and everything besides what hasn't been mentioned thus far.

[BenTek1]

For the websites that I manage at work, WebDrive ftp client is essential. Haven't seen it mentioned yet so here is a link: http://www.webdrive.com/products/webdrive/ 
Also really like Spiceworks and join.me.

[GenKaan]

Software I cant live without:

DxTory - for recording games
Fraps - for recording games
Tor - Browser
SpyBot - anti malware
EverNote - cloud notes
SpeedFan - temp monitor
WinRAR - zip/rar software
Total Commander - explorer replacement
StartIsBack - win8 fix
LiveStreamer (with GUI) - streaming twitch using VLC
Virtual Clone Drive - ISO file reader
Sound Switcher - audio switcher with hotkey function
TrueCrypt - because Im paranoid

[supersoul]

foobar - playback switching hotkey macros
hyperdesktop - screenshot quickly uploaded to imgur so i can share it easily
f.lux - you know

[plegnic]

...
TrueCrypt - because Im paranoid

Surprised people are still using TrueCrypt instead of VeraCrypt or one of the other forks after that whole security debacle.

[smknjoe]

Also, is there any reason you don't use Clonezilla for imaging Windows-based workstations? Just curious.

Well, it's mainly because Ghost doesn't like imaging Linux drives for some reason, not to mention that my current project requires dealing with obsolete technology (refurbishing a bunch of old Pentium 4's to be used as terminals) which aren't capable of booting our Win8.1 PE flash drive (they boot to Win7 PE just fine, but Ghost isn't a part of that WIN image).

And because I'm too lazy to get Clonezilla working on a USB drive, that would have enough space to store the images...

keepass2

Almost forgot that one... it's such a great password manager.

Clonezilla is on UBCD.


UBCD is really great. I've used it for over 10 years on several hundred PCs and it's definitely a "Swiss Army Knife" on a flash drive. Couple that with a power supply tester and you have everything you need for comprehensive hardware diagnostics.

R-Studio is some great data recovery software that is cross platform and works well with RAID.

Nmap is essential for network auditing/diagnostics.

DD (or variants) for most cloning.

Unetbootin for creating bootable flash drives from regular ISOs in Linux

VMware Workstation and ESXi

Rsync for backups

[BlueNalgene]

Also, is there any reason you don't use Clonezilla for imaging Windows-based workstations? Just curious.

Well, it's mainly because Ghost doesn't like imaging Linux drives for some reason, not to mention that my current project requires dealing with obsolete technology (refurbishing a bunch of old Pentium 4's to be used as terminals) which aren't capable of booting our Win8.1 PE flash drive (they boot to Win7 PE just fine, but Ghost isn't a part of that WIN image).

And because I'm too lazy to get Clonezilla working on a USB drive, that would have enough space to store the images...

keepass2

Almost forgot that one... it's such a great password manager.

Clonezilla is on UBCD.


UBCD is really great. I've used it for over 10 years on several hundred PCs and it's definitely a "Swiss Army Knife" on a flash drive. Couple that with a power supply tester and you have everything you need for comprehensive hardware diagnostics.

R-Studio is some great data recovery software that is cross platform and works well with RAID.

Nmap is essential for network auditing/diagnostics.

DD (or variants) for most cloning.

Unetbootin for creating bootable flash drives from regular ISOs in Linux

VMware Workstation and ESXi

Rsync for backups

You use R for data recovery? I thought it was just for statistics.

[smknjoe]

Not that Rstudio. Google r-studio and you'll see what I'm talking about.

[BlueNalgene]

What a tricky little hyphen.

[greath]

Volume2 - Customizable Screen Display for system volume. Also allows for quickly switching default audio device and has some nifty mouse macros.

[Dihedral]

Light Table is a really nice text editor for linux.

Oh, and also WinDirStat is really useful.

Everyone should have paint.net

Freemake have a series of slightly dodgy looking converter programs that are very useful.

[clickclack123]

I use Keepass and Dropbox on my Windows machine, and KeePassDroid and Dropbox on my Android phone. Works great so I can access and edit all my passwords from anywhere.

[cmadrid]

Deluge - favorite torrent client, tho I haven't looked for a new one in a while..
f.lux - helps with eye strain
uBlock - ad block alternative
HWMonitor - I like to keep track of my temps/voltages
7zip - unzip/rar stuffs
VLC - media player

[jackalope]

OS: slackware / ubuntu
WM: ratpoison
Terminal: terminator
Browser: firefox / lynx
File Manager: nautilus / mc
Shell: bash / ksh
Image: GIMP
Media Player: cmus / vlc
Editor/IDE: geany / nano for small things.
IRC: irssi

Has nobody mentioned nmap?

[swill]

I am a software developer on a Mac and this little tidbit really improves the life of anyone who spends most of their time in the terminal on a Mac.

Code: [Select]

cdf() { # cd's to frontmost window of Finder
  cd "`osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' \
  -e 'set myname to POSIX path of (target of window 1 as alias)' \
  -e 'end tell' 2>/dev/null`"
}

You place this in your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile file on a Mac.  Then in your Terminal you can type cdf and it will cd to the location of the top most Finder window.  I live in the Terminal, so this is an awesome link between the Finder and Terminal for me.

[Trent]

PDFtk builder -- http://www.angusj.com/pdftkb/

Great simple tool to manipulate, split, combine pdf documents.  Use almost on a daily basis.

Glasswire -- https://www.glasswire.com/

Interesting new free firewall software, gives great notifications and graphs.

Keepass -- http://keepass.info/

Encrypted password database.

Mobaxterm -- http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/

A really nice terminal application that has SFTP support by default.

[swill]

SublimeText - Best editor around.  I hate IDEs with a passion because they make you lazy and lead to bad practices
VMware Fusion - The only desktop virtualization which does true PV passthrough (for those of us that do hypervisor orchestration development).

The command line is the most valuable tool in my toolbox by far.  Learn how to get the best out of ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile and things get so much easier.

Some examples...

Setup a shortcut to a directory you use often:

Code: [Select]

export code=/the/really/long/path/that/you/type/often

Then use it like this: cd $code

Simplify the way you search your history:

Code: [Select]

alias hist='history | grep'

Then search for any command containing ssh easily with: hist ssh

Re-run commands out of your history quickly (no copy & paste):
(Lets assume you are using the 'hist' alias I just described)

Code: [Select]

$ hist cat
  140  cat README.md
  416  cat .git/config
  527  cat ~/.bash_profile
  528  hist cat

Now if you want to run 'cat ~/.bash_profile' again, simply type: !527


Enough tricks for now.  Hope these are useful for someone...

[clickclack123]

Nice post swill.

I use the history functions in bash a fair bit as well. I find the command line so efficient for doing stuff compared to clicking with the mouse. Also you can tell a geek efficent computer user by how many keyboard shortcuts they use.