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[flagged] Best Linux Apps for Advanced Users and Hackers (rockiger.com)
38 points by macco on Aug 28, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 26 comments



I would recommend keepassxc instead of keepassx, mpv for videos/multimedia.

Those are no advanced users / hackers apps, rather entry level.


I use KeePassX on Ubuntu (I liked v1.x's multi-window interface better than v2.x's single window). What are the advantages of KeePassXC over KeePassX?


There was a Hackernews thread a while ago [1]

Basically, KeePassX is maintained by one person and hasn't seen activity in quite a while. keepassxc is a community fork, they continue development, and merged various bugfixes as well as new features.

Additional Features according to project page: [2]

* Auto-Type on all three major platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS)

* Twofish encryption

* YubiKey challenge-response support

* TOTP generation

* CSV import

* Command line interface

* DEP and ASLR hardening

* Stand-alone password and passphrase generator

* Password strength meter

* Using website favicons as entry icons

* Merging of databases

* Automatic reload when the database was changed externally

* KeePassHTTP support for use with PassIFox in Mozilla Firefox, chromeIPass in Google Chrome and Chromium and passafari in Safari.

* Many bug fixes

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13468261 [2] https://keepassxc.org/project


This is low-level spam.


Missing Sublime Text as an editor, and Terminator as a terminal. Maybe the title should go to "31 Linux Apps used by an Advanced User", or the page title "31 Linux Apps you will love" ?


Gave up on Terminator for Tilix: less crashes, can save panel placements, and other goodies.


I honestly would love an iTerm2 port to Linux. Having the panel splits being actual tmux panes is amazing


Just my 2 cents, but I would - once again - recommend the Dillo web browser. I has its drawbacks, there is no Javascript, and CSS support is ... not awesome.

But on the upside, you can have dozens of tabs open and still use less RAM than a freshly started instance of Firefox or Chrome.

Due to the Javascript/CSS situation, many web sites look broken or just remain blank, but it's great for reading documentation where you can easily have dozens of tabs open at a time.

(There is a Windows port, too, but last time I checked it was very unstable.)


While we're on the subject of esoteric browsers. I'd recommend qutebrowser. It's WebKit based and has a few quirks (YouTube full screen doesn't work) but it's by far the most complete browser with vim keybinds.

If you love Firefox for vimperator I implore you to try qutebrowser.


> It's WebKit based

They will soon make the switch to webenginge as default [1]

I can also highly recommend qutebrowser, especially with vimperator/pentadactyl in firefox becoming deprecated once version 57 is out.

[1] https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/2335


I'm curious what your views of hv3 and NetSurf are.

I agree with you with Dillo. I just wish it wasn't C++ and used a single-process model (the multiprocess approach isn't implemented properly and sometimes deadlocks).


... I am kind of embarrassed to admit I know neither of these. I know NetSurf by name, but that's about all I know about it. Maybe I should give them a try. ;-)

As for C++, all of the "major" browsers are written in C++, and as a mere user, I don't feel as strongly about it. ;-) As for the single-process model, I don't mind - without Javascript or other plugins, the drawback is much less noticeable. I just wish it had proper session managment.


Not a problem.

hv3 has been unmaintained for years sadly. It's a C-based HTML/CSS parser hooked up/exposed to a Tcl/Tk-based UI (the renderer itself is a Tcl module). IIRC it has some kind of very rudimentary "ECMAScript" support, I'm not sure which engine it uses. If hv3 has one major issue, it's that the entire loading/processing architecture is heavily single-threaded, and UI-blocking; the whole thing locks up until the page is done loading and rendering. Unfortunately, due to its ancient/naive/unoptimized architecture (built for KB-sized webpages with zero complexity) I found it embarassingly easy to bog down when I tried it years ago (...and webpages were smaller).

NetSurf originated on the Amiga, found its way into RISC OS, and compiles for an eyebrow-raising number of platforms. It's ridiculously ambitious and aims to support HTML5, but has a nanoscopic development team. It's also written in C. Last I heard, JS was being slowly added in, and I vaguely recall a renderer overhaul to support dynamic rendering so things like underlining on :hover would actually work as you moused over/away.

One thing though. I'm not sure if it was the old machine I was trying it on or just an unoptimized rendering pipeline, but Dillo feels "realtime" in terms of scrolling on virtually a toaster, while NetSurf seems to have an almost-perceptible <50ms delay when moving around. A close runner-up is that NetSurf's load times are... lengthy, as well. NetSurf doesn't lock the UI (or get into infinite loops :D) like hv3 does, but it tends to like downloading entire sites before displaying anything, which can be honestly distracting. (Dillo is of course faster here purely because it discards 99% of layout and style :D)

That said, out of the two, NetSurf definitely warrants the most effort (although, conveniently, prebuilt Linux binaries can be found for hv3).

One protip for NetSurf: follow the build instructions to the letter - download and shell-source the build script, and use the recommended paths, at least the first time. If you do that, it builds in about 5 minutes (git clone takes longer than make does!) with no hassle (eg, the build tools continually failing to find everything). The build environment is extremely simple, but the fastest way to understand it (if you want to point the build dir somewhere else for example) is to run through how it wants to work at least once.


Entry level app at best, hackers? Unlikely.


Agreed. The site actually says "Starting with Linux on your laptop and want to know which apps you should use?"

It's great tips for beginner users, but advanced users and "hackers" waste their time scrolling through a list of apps like Firefox, VLC and Gimp.


Nice advertorial


What is being advertised?


> This is a shameless plug; I am the author of Akiee, but I really think Akiee is one of the best task managers out there.


A list of apps for advanced user without command line tools like pass (https://www.passwordstore.org/), vim, git... Seriously?


how are these for advanced users and hackers? A REAL advanced/hacker entry setup would be: Internet: -Lynx -w3m Office, text editors, TODO list, note keeping: -Vim -Emacs Dev tools: -vagrant (headless) -git -language setup of choice (gcc, python javac ....) Security: -GPG -pass -openssl clu Multimedia: -mplayer Graphics: -imagemagic Games: -nethack Productivity: -i3 -xclip -xterm


Freemind was superseeded by Freemind years ago...

Hacker tools: ssh, vi, tmux, git, gpg, nc, battleOfWesnoth, ...


atom for 'advanced users and hackers'? check that again ;)


I'm a 10 years emacs user and considering move to atom. Why do you think it is not suitable for advanced users and hackers?


This post is worth reading if only for the Typora suggestion. Finally, I have a WYSIWYG replacement for Haroopad!

Granted, most of these apps probably aren't for advanced users and hackers, but there's still some damned good app suggestions here.


i'd suggest vim and sublime text 3 as editors. atom is really a poor choice if you do serious work in an editor


This is missing Visual Studio Code and MPV.




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