Let’s kick off with a collection of detailed reviews highlighting 26 essential utilities, small, indispensable tools, useful for anyone running a Linux machine. They cover a wide spectrum of utilities.
The following articles focus on specific topics.
| Utilities | |
|---|---|
| A kind of system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain the computer | |
 | Archive Managers - A file archiver is computer software which brings together a group of files into a single archive file. An archive file is therefore a collection of files and directories that are stored in one file. |
 | Boot Utilities - Improve the load time of your system, customize the booster loader and create bootable live USB drives without burning optical media. |
 | Compression Tools - Data compression is the process of storing data in a format that uses less space than the original representation would use. Compressing data can be very useful particularly in the field of communications as it enables devices to transmit or store data in fewer bits. |
| Multi-Core Compression Tools - Use all the cores present on your system when compressing files, offering massive speed advantages. |
 | Diff Tools - File comparison compares the contents of computer files, finding their common contents and their differences. The result of the comparison is often known as a diff. |
 | Console-Based Diff Tools - A roundup focusing solely on terminal (console) based software including great tools like diff-so-fancy. |
| System Cleaning - Vaccum up the detritus on your computer. This software ensures your computer system retains its vitality. |
 | Benchmark Tools - A benchmark is the act of running computer programs in order to assess the performance of computer hardware and software applications. |
 | Password Managers - A password manager is a utility which helps users store and retrieve passwords and other data. Most password managers use a local database to hold the encrypted password data. |
 | Clipboard Managers - Small lean applications that focus on speed and efficiency. This type of application lets you copy and manage items to your clipboard. Copying, searching, managing and sharing clips is common functionality offered by this type of application. |
 | e-book Tools - An electronic book (commonly abbreviated e-book) is a text and image-based publication which can be read on a computer or other digital devices such as an e-book reader. Read e-books on a desktop computer or notebook |
| Terminal Multiplexers - Exploit the full power of the terminal. Improve your productivity at the console. Combine one of these terminal multiplexers with a tiling window manager, and you’ve got a low resource desktop environment. |
| Terminal Session Recorders - A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, often carrying audio narration. Screencasting software takes a series of screenshots of a running application, recording the user’s actions, and creating a video file. |
| Command Line Navigation Tools - Tiny but useful tools that complement the cd command. They help users to navigate faster around the filesystem, and increase productivity when using the shell. |
 | Natural Language Processing - Technology for dealing with our all-pervasive product: human language |
 | Dictionary Tools - Look up words and phrases or different languages in multiple dictionary file formats |
 | Font Tools - We highlight the best font management software available for Linux, as well as identifying our favorite font editor. |
 | Alternatives to Top - top is a small utility that offers a dynamic real-time view of a running system. This article identifies alternatives to top that offer more control in managing processes on a running system. |
 | Mobile Phone Management - This article illustrates some good open source tools that let you manage your mobile phone. |
 | X10 Home Automation - X10 is an open standard for controlling home electrical equipment remotely. It works across home power lines and is extremely low-bandwidth. |
| Home Automation - Home Automation software is software that lets you control and monitor common home and office appliances using a computer. |
 | Monitor Calibration - The objective when calibrating a monitor is to ensure the monitor has color references known by everyone (humans and software). |
 | Crafting Tools - Handicraft is a term that describes many different types of work where practical and decorative objects are made by hand or by using only simple tools. |
 | Making Linux More Accessible - Accessibility is the degree to which products, devices, services, or environments are available to as many people as possible whatever their circumstances. |
 | Essential Utilities: Flash OS Images - Install various Linux distributions and operating systems on a removable flash drive or external hard disk. |
 | Essential Tools to Search the Filesystem - Desktop search is a software application which searches the contents of computer files, rather than searching the internet. |
 | Console Batch Renamers - Batch rename files and directories quickly and safely. |
| Wallpaper Setters - Do you find your Linux desktop background rather mundane but have problems in finding attractive wallpapers? |
 | GUI Batch Renamers - Batch rename files and directories quickly and safely with a GUI. |
| GUI Command Schedulers - Users who set up and maintain software environments use cron to schedule jobs (commands or shell scripts) to run periodically at fixed times, dates, or intervals. |
 | Find and Delete Duplicate Files - Good duplicate finding software compares more than just a filename – including the file size – so it doesn’t remove files which are different to each other. |
 | Essential Utilities: Reclaiming Disk Space - Command-line and graphical utilities designed to make tracking down wasted disk space effortless. |
 | Drop-in replacements for Core Utilities - Budding open source developers have tasked themselves to modernise some of the coreutils. |
| Replacements for ls - Recommended replacements for ls, a command to list computer files. ls is part of coreutils. |
| Replacements for du - Programs used to estimate file space usage. du is part of coreutils. |