This is a series of cornerstone articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small, indispensable utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems.
You’ve moved over from Windows or Mac OS X to the wonderful world of Linux. You’ve selected a Linux distro (after a bit of fruitful distro hopping), chosen a desktop environment, and studied the basic Linux commands. Now you want some really useful free applications. Well this article picks the finest open source software to help you manage your system.
The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. There’s a wide range of software we’ve recommended. There’s genuinely useful utilities, productivity software, networking, backup, monitoring, system cleaning and much more. All to download for nothing.
Every application featured in the series is open source goodness at its finest.
The series is growing. We’re currently adding an essential system tool to the series every fortnight or so.
| Essential System Tools | |
|---|---|
| ps_mem | Accurate reporting of software's memory consumption |
| gtop | System monitoring dashboard |
| pet | Simple command-line snippet manager |
| Alacritty | Innovative, hardware-accelerated terminal emulator |
| inxi | Command-line system information tool that's a time-saver for everyone |
| BleachBit | System cleaning software. Quick and easy way to service your computer |
| catfish | Versatile file searching software |
| journalctl | Query and display messages from the journal |
| Nmap | Network security tool that builds a "map" of the network |
| ddrescue | Data recovery tool, retrieving data from failing drives as safely as possible |
| Neofetch | System information tool written in Bash |
| Timeshift | Similar to Windows' System Restore functionality, Time Machine Tool in Mac OS |
| GParted | Resize, copy, and move partitions without data |
| Clonezilla | Partition and disk cloning software |
| fdupes | Find or delete duplicate files |
| Krusader | Advanced, twin-panel (commander-style) file manager |
| nmon | Systems administrator, tuner, and benchmark tool |
| f3 | Detect and fix counterfeit flash storage |
| QJournalctl | Graphical User Interface for systemd’s journalctl |
| QDirStat | Qt-based directory statistics |
| Firejail | Restrict the running environment of untrusted applications |
| VeraCrypt | Strong disk encryption software |
| Unison | Console and graphical file synchronization software |
| hyperfine | Command-line benchmarking tool |
| TLP | Must-have tool for anyone running Linux on a notebook |
| nnn | Portable terminal file manager that's amazingly frugal |
| Glances | Cross-platform system monitoring tool written in Python |
| CPU-X | System profiler with both a GUI and text-based |
| Ventoy | Create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files |
| Fail2ban | Ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors |
| dust | More intuitive version of du written in Rust |
The table is ordered by publication date.
If you have any recommendations for system tools to be added, drop us a comment below.
This article complements our recommended software where we recommend many hundreds of applications for all different purposes, not just system tools.
Instead of QDirStat, I still stick to ncdu. It’s fast, small and yes, it runs on a cli. So now you are warned 😉
What are we warned about?
Interesting mix of cli and gui applications here, although a few are surprising. Helpful to mark which are cli and which are gui.
cli – ps_mem, gtop, pet, inxi, journalctl, nmap, ddrescue, Clonezilla, fdupes, nmon, f3, firejail
gui – Alacritty, BleachBit, catfish, Timeshift, GParted, Krusader, QJournalctl, QDirStat