Tim’s Tool Shed — Pt. 3
There’s a Turing completeness in the level of customization you have over your machine. TTS is one-half evangelism and one-half practical tips and tool recommendations. My goal is to get as many people into the world of Linux and open-source software as possible.
NEOFETCH REPLACEMENTS
Neofetch is the gold standard system information display tool. It’s extremely popular in many ricing forums, arguably essential. However, neofetch has been around so long that better alternatives exist.
Pure C replacement for standard neofetch.
Fastfetch is great out of the box, it looks and functions exactly as you would expect neofetch but with some extra information and features.
A system information frontend, with an (unhealthy) emphasis on performance.
If you’re looking to go for more customization, I recommend macchina. It’s another great tool built in Rust. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s no-nonsense. For those that want to take things further, macchina offers plenty of customization. The team behind macchina is hard at work improving the core functionality over adding features, which in my opinion, is an intelligent choice on their part.
UTILITY
Another reason I always try to throw beginners into Linux is the abundance of tools created to help with learning. Aside from the obvious chatter about daily driving Linux, there are programs to help make the transition easier. Here are some of my favorites.
A tool for writing Linux pipes with instant live preview
At this point, it’s rare for a tool to get me excited. Up is one of those tools. Up is an instant feedback TUI that displays an instant preview of pipes at work, and what happens to text when you use programs like grep or awk. I love using this to practice with sed, or to test a CLI tool I built.
Up is also great for beginners getting their feet wet with new commands, feedback is one of the greatest teachers. Up does that in spades.
Terminal bandwidth utilization tool.
Bandwhich is a great tool to see what my machine is up to regarding the network. It has a nice TUI (built-in Rust) that shows which processes are making network connections, their utilization, and which remote hosts my machine is connecting to. It’s a great tool to see in action.
Terminal frontend for sqlite with autocomplete.
In my programming projects, I’m starting to use sqlite3 much more often. I’m relatively new to SQL and its syntax. litecli helps me just enough to be able to do meaningful work while learning the syntax as I go. This is a great tool for beginners like myself that need a nudge in the right direction.
More tools on the way :)
