Software Shopping List

Opinionated list of software. Mostly the best software available in given category. Mostly based on informed opinions.

Operating Systems

Linux, FreeBSD

Other Operating Systems of Interest

OpenBSD, plan9, TempleOS, DragonFlyBSD, Amoeba, Sailfish OS, Android, OpenWRT, pfsense, Minix, QNX, Tizen, L4, HelenOS

Text editing

vim

Relational Database Management System

PostgreSQL, sqlite

Hierarchical Database

filesystem + find, grep, Text Manipulation Software

Key-Value Database

redis

Version Control

git

Terminal Emulator

urxvt

Terminal Multiplexer

tmux

Shell

zsh

Accounting Ledger

ledger

Build System

GNU make

Window Manager

xmonad + xmobar, dmenu

PDF Viewer

zathura

DNS Client

bind9 utils

Email Client

claws-mail, mutt?

HTTP Client

curl

HTTP Sniffer

mitmproxy, foxyproxy, fiddler

TCP Sniffer

tcpdump

Diagram Drawing Software

Puml, Dia

DNS Server

unbound, knotnds, djbdns?

Image Viewer

eog

SMTP Server

Postfix, qmail?, opensmtpd?

IMAP Server

dovecot

Web Browser

Firefox + Multi-Account Containers, uBlock Origin, uMatrix, vimium

Image Editor

GIMP, imagemagick, inkscape

Plotting

gnuplot

User-To-User Encryption

gnupg

Hex Editor

hexedit, hexdump, xxd

Hardware Detection

hwinfo, lscpu, lsusb, lm-sensors, lspci, (usbutils, pciutils)

JSON Manipulation

jq

XML Manipuilation

xmlstarlet

Text Manipulation

sed, awk, cut, zsh expansions, grep

Audio player

mplayer, vlc, foobar2000

Video player / encoder

mplayer, ffmpeg

TCP Client

netcat

TLS Encrypted TCP Client

openssl s_client

Network Probe

nmap

Audio Control

pavucontrol, alsamixer

Process Explorer

psutils, htop, pgrep

Data Serialization

msgpack

Man Page Format

reStructuredText

Documentation Generator

sphinx

Text Formats

reStructedText, latex

Command Line Interface Testing

cram

Virtualization

libvirt + qemu-kvm + virtio

Networking

bridge-utils, iptables, iproute2, socat

Network and local file transfers

rsync + ssh

Syscall Sniffer / Tracer

strace

Remote Filesystems

nfs, samba, sshfs

Archiving

tar, zip, rar, unrar, unzip

Compression

gzip, bzip, xz

HTML validation / formatting

tidyhtml

VNC Client

tigervnc

Systray

trayer

Directory Listing

tree

Xorg utils

xrandr, xcape, xhost, xscreensaver, xsel

File Systems

ext4, vfat, zfs