This is a new series highlighting best-of-breed utilities. We’ll be covering a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides. There’s a complete list of the tools in this series in the Summary section.
It’s possible to grant more importance to a process, giving it more time on the CPU. This property of a process is called niceness. A process with high priority is said to be less nice because it’s taking more of the CPU’s time, which leaves less for everything else. Alternatively, a process with low priority (a “nice” process) gets processor time only after other processes with higher priority have been serviced.
Prioritize applications’ CPU and IO scheduling is a good way to improve performance on what really matters. This can be actioned per command with nice and ionice commands, but there’s a better way. Ananicy is a shell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities, with community-driven set of rules for popular applications.
It’s free and open source software written in Python.
Installation
Let’s clone the project’s repository, compile, and install the system with a few simple commands:
$ cd Ananicy
$ sudo make install
If you want to create your own Debian package, replace sudo make install with make deb.
You’ll find packages for Ananicy in many popular Linux distributions.
You’ll need schedtool installed on your system. This is a utility that sets all CPU scheduling parameters.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Excellent Utilities | |
|---|---|
| Abricotine | Markdown editor with inline preview functionality |
| AES Crypt | Encrypt files using the Advanced Encryption Standard |
| Ananicy | Shell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities |
| broot | Next gen tree explorer and customizable launcher |
| Cerebro | Fast application launcher |
| cheat.sh | Community driven unified cheat sheet |
| CopyQ | Advanced clipboard manager |
| croc | Securely transfer files and folders from the command-line |
| Deskreen | Live streaming your desktop to a web browser |
| duf | Disk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df |
| exa | A turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command |
| Extension Manager | Browse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions |
| fd | Wonderful alternative to the venerable find |
| fkill | Kill processes quick and easy |
| fontpreview | Quickly search and preview fonts |
| horcrux | File splitter with encryption and redundancy |
| Kooha | Simple screen recorder |
| KOReader | Document viewer for a wide variety of file formats |
| Imagine | A simple yet effective image optimization tool |
| LanguageTool | Style and grammar checker for 30+ languages |
| Liquid Prompt | Adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh |
| lnav | Advanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting |
| lsd | Like exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls |
| McFly | Navigate through your bash shell history |
| mdless | Formatted and highlighted view of Markdown files |
| Nushell | Flexible cross-platform shell with a modern feel |
| OCRmyPDF | Add OCR text layer to scanned PDFs |
| Oh My Zsh | Framework to manage your Zsh configuration |
| Paperwork | Designed to simplify the management of your paperwork |
| PDF Mix Tool | Perform common editing operations on PDF files |
| peco | Simple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful |
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern |
| Rnote | Sketch and take handwritten notes |
| scrcpy | Display and control Android devices |
| Sticky | Simulates the traditional “sticky note” style stationery on your desktop |
| tldr | Simplified and community-driven man pages |
| tmux | A terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow |
| Tusk | An unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential |
| Ulauncher | Sublime application launcher |
| Watson | Track the time spent on projects |
| Whoogle Search | Self-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine |
| Zellij | Terminal workspace with batteries included |