Tim’s Tool Shed — Pt. 4
I’ve been a little wrapped up with school and an internship but that hasn’t stopped me from exploring and finding cool stuff that I’ve been using. With school in full swing, I’ve been focused on tools that will make things a bit easier for me.
Monitoring
Sort of like top or htop but with zoomable charts, CPU, GPU, network, and disk usage.
I’ve using btop for a few years as my primary resource monitor. That is until I came across Zenith. Zenith is built with a nice straightforward no-nonsense user interface. Its ability to compact all sorts of information including temperatures, processes, and resource utilization without suffocating the display makes it my new go-to monitor.
A more intuitive version of du in rust.
I love a good visual representation. Dust is a rust tool that provides a bar graph to show file space usage at a glance. I don’t use it often but it’s great for anyone that likes to tinker with storage.
Utilities
A tool for exploring each layer in a docker image.
I started working with containers as of late, and dive has leveled the learning curve to a huge extent. Written in Go, it’s a tool that lets you dive into a docker image and explore it layer by layer. It shows the files added, removed, and changed with great color coding. A must-have for anyone learning.
A command-line benchmarking tool
Hyperfine is a rust tool that is like the time command on steroids. It’s better looking, it has some great features, and it allows you to pit your program’s execution against each other. I love to use hyperfine when I write bash scripts especially. It’s a great tool to help you write more efficient code and to have a little fun while doing it.
Terminal based presentation tool
Slides has been one of my favorite tools as of late. It saved my hide in multiple situations where a presentation needed to be made. Built with Go, and full of great features like syntax highlighting. You create your slides in a single file with markdown, separating the slides with three dashes. You wouldn’t catch me dead using PowerPoint. Slides shouldn’t be overlooked!
As always, more tools on the way :)
