Vault

Here in 2025, could you run your life from a terminal without a graphical user interface? See Productivity Applications below for the list of terminal applications and the related articles. This is an evergreen article that will be updated as I explore this topic. As more productivity tools are reviewed, they will be added to my list below. I learned computing back in the good old DOS days. OK, they weren’t really all that good. Computing has always came with its share of difficulties. It was an exciting time. It was the first time to ever get my hands on a keyboard. Learning new tools and getting the computer to do stuff was fascinating. ...

This is my big list of apps that I’ve played around with or am thinking of playing around with. See Terminal App as Daily Driver for a closer look at some of them. CLI tools abook - Address book (system package) atuin - Command line history replacement, puts history in a SQLite database that can be synchronized between machines. bat - a “cat” replacement bpytop - btop++ is a system resource monitor tool similar to top, but better. chezmoi - Manage configuration files (dotfiles) using git to sync them between devices. cmatrix - Matrix movie cascading letters effects for your enjoyment. cpufetch - Display CPU information. curl cheat.sh - A TLDR like tool that does not require installation. Get short help info on any command. duf - Nice looking disk usage, mounted devices display. information. (df alternative) dust - du like tool. Disk space consumption monitoring tool (du + rust = rust). dysk - Nice looking alternative to df. entr - run commands on file changes in a folder. eza - ls replacement (system package) fastfetch - Display system info (replaces neofetch). fdfind - alternative to the find command ffmpeg Audio and video conversion and streaming tool. fzf - fabulous flexible fuzzy finder. gdu - Disk usage analyzer. glow - Read Markdown files from the command line. helix - Post-modern text editor hollywood - screen saver hacker type screen homebrew - CLI package manager is awesome. htop - Interactive process viewer. httpie - Command line HTTP client. httpx - Multipurpose HTTP toolkit. inxi - System information tool. jq - JSON processor and formatter khal Terminal calendar application, supports CalDAV. lazydocker - TUI for docker and docker-compose. lazygit - TUI for git commands. litecli - SQLite command line tool lynx - Text web browser ImageMagick Edit, convert, and manipulate digital images. mc - midnight commander file manager mutt-wizard - Automatically set up neomutt email client. nala - alternative apt command package manager sudo apt install nala navi - interactive cheat sheet that lets you execute one line commands. nb - notebook nb is a Markdown note taking tool. ncdu - disk usage analyzer no more secrets - Sneakers data decryption movie effect. nvim (neovim) - Massively customizable vim-based text editor. pandoc - the universal document converter. powertop - laptop monitoring tool, battery tuning tool presenterm - presentations in Markdown qman - better man pages ranger - Ranger file manager that leverages vim key bindings. rg - ripgrep is a blazingly fast regex search tool. speedtest-cli - Measure your internet connection speed from the command line. SQLiteStudiocli - A CLI tool for managing SQLite databases that comes as part of SQLiteStudio. stow - dotfiles manager taskwarrior - Great to-do list manager. taskwarrior-tui taskwarrior-tui interactive interface for taskwarrior. tealdeer - tldr implementation written in rust. tldr - Simplified man pages. trash-cli - instead of just deleting files, this tool uses the trash bin. tree Display a tree view of folders. (I am using the tree view option in eza instead) vdirsyncer - synchronize calendars and address books. wiki-tui - view wikipedia articles from command line yazi - My favorite CLI file manager z - zoxide - a smarter change directory command replacement References Terminal Trove - Massive TUI application reference Awesome CLI Applications Will Webberley - various CLI productivity applications. Pure Bash Bible - a guidebook for getting the most out of bash. GUI Apps Here are some GUI apps that may be a little off the beaten path but could fill a role. ...

See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications. WordGrinder WordGrinder Source Code WordGrinder is a very simple word processor. Simplicity is its superpower. It is minimal and gets out of the way of writing. It is excellent at supporting a workflow of write first, edit second, format last. I evaluated version 0.8. Currently version 0.9 is available, but not sure of the changes. ...

With the venerable history of terminal based spreadsheets, I was surprised at the lack of CLI spreadsheet tools. Programs like VisiCalc, Lotus 123, and Quattro Pro were once the killer apps of the DOS world. Sc-im seems to be the only one that may still be active at this point. See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications. sc-im (Spreadsheet Calculator Improvised) Source Code Tutorial Online Man Page Sc-im Wiki This is a complex application that uses vim based key bindings. If you’re in the process of learning vim keys, this will make you proficient in a short time. ...

See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications. Neovim is IMHO the premier CLI text editor. It is a worthy successor to VIM and has added lua as a plugin / configuration language that allows many amazing things to be done. I have played around with nvim, but was just learning vim motions along with trying to get things set up in a way that worked for me. Being new at this, it was a daunting task and I felt like I need to have a better understanding of all the plugins before committing to them. ...

See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications. I don’t have a need to do presentations at this point. I do teach sometimes, but the places I teach don’t have the facilities to do computer based presentations. When working for a large corporation, we always just used Microsoft PowerPoint. From the terminal, I’m looking for an application that will allow me to build Markdown files and turn them into some kind of presentation. ...

See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications. What is a good productivity setup without a database? My database of choice is SQLite. It fits the bill perfectly for all my use cases. It is light, fast, ubiquitous, and very useful. SQLite comes with its own command line interface, sqlite3. It is surprising all the places you can find SQLite databases in use. ...

I have settled on a structure for my note taking system. It is simply this: Each note is a Markdown file. .md extension is preferred. Notes reside in a top level folder. Let’s call the top level folder a vault. There can be sub-folders that help categorize the notes. This simple structure allows maintaining a personal knowledge management system with only a text editor. This is the same kind of structure that static site generators use. ...

See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications. Terminal email clients are a beast unto themselves. It is one thing to set up the email client and another to set up the email client so it automatically synchronizes mail from various servers. And, sync calendars and address books, and provide organizing and searching capabilities for your mailboxes. Did I mention, managing your passwords? ...

Note: See the parent document: Using the Terminal as a Daily Driver for more about terminal productivity applications. As I look into terminal calendars, I remember the days when I had one of those desktop blotter calendars. When I worked for a big company, they specified the software we had to use for email and meetings. So, if you didn’t like their toolset, too bad. You had to live with it. ...