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thomasaaron
April 22nd, 2010, 04:05 PM
Hey, guys. I'd like to compile a list of interesting CLI and text mode applications for Ubuntu. If it is not available in the Ubuntu repos, please provide a link to the website, or some other information regarding where to obtain it. Ultimately, I'd like to choose several of the better ones and write some reviews on them.

I'll get us started...

task is a neat task/project management app.

It's available from here (http://taskwarrior.org/wiki/taskwarrior/Download).

Here is a brief review and tutorial (http://thomasaaron.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/a-cool-task-management-cli-application/).

whiskeylover
April 22nd, 2010, 04:07 PM
ls

koleoptero
April 22nd, 2010, 04:18 PM
cmus - Music player with a library, a queue, a playlist and a browser, very speedy as expected and very flexible. A no-brainer for me.

rtorrent - Because downloading and seeding torrents shouldn't be taking up resources. Keep your computer cool when torrenting overnight.

htop - System monitoring as it should be.

samalex
April 22nd, 2010, 06:20 PM
Hey, guys. I'd like to compile a list of interesting CLI and text mode applications for Ubuntu. If it is not available in the Ubuntu repos, please provide a link to the website, or some other information regarding where to obtain it. Ultimately, I'd like to choose several of the better ones and write some reviews on them.

I'll get us started...

task is a neat task/project management app.

It's available from here (http://taskwarrior.org/wiki/taskwarrior/Download).

Here is a brief review and tutorial (http://thomasaaron.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/a-cool-task-management-cli-application/).

Hi Thomas ...

About a week ago I posted a thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1453527) with the proposal that it might be fun to 'camp' on the Internet using CLI instead of GUI since most tasks, outside of graphical WWW, can be accomplished via shell now'days. In the thread I listed lots of CLI apps I use and some suggestions on how to really utilize the Internet in a command line only world.

Years ago in our LUG I demoed many command line alternatives to commonly used GUI apps, but most considered it a futile effort since they considered shell a legacy interface. Honestly I still like the thought of turning on my computer and being presented with a text login and flashing cursor :) It reminds me of my early days of computing and my first days of accessing networked computers, which were mainly BBSes and a few other systems accessible via Tymnet and Telenet. Heck I still remember the local Tymnet number - 817-776-0880 - since I dialed it so many freakin times over the years :)

Take care --

Sam

RiceMonster
April 22nd, 2010, 06:24 PM
htop
vim

jaco223
April 22nd, 2010, 06:25 PM
+1. Htop

rudihawk
April 22nd, 2010, 06:25 PM
I'm a big fan of:

irssi - IRC client.

I also use finch every now and again.

vnstat is pretty awesome too!

RiceMonster
April 22nd, 2010, 06:26 PM
irssi - IRC client.

Damn it, that's the the one I was trying to remember. It's my favourite IRC client.

handy
April 22nd, 2010, 06:28 PM
htop
nano (too easy to forget & too hard to live without)

JDShu
April 22nd, 2010, 06:29 PM
emacs ;)

ve4cib
April 22nd, 2010, 06:32 PM
I tend to use Nano a lot. Yeah, I know, I should use Vi or Emacs, but meh. I like Nano.

The Python command-line interpreter is also great. I use it surprisingly often as either a calculator, or to quickly prototype/test algorithms.

Spidermonkey is another fun interpreter. It's essentially Mozilla's Javascript interpreter, but turned into a command-line application. Obviously you can't access anything to do with document, window, or the like, but for calculations and quick processing and printing results to STDOUT it works pretty well.

I also regularly use the usual battery of ls/cd/rm/mkdir/rmdir commands. And there's also bash (kind of using that one by default), ssh, mount/umount, and wipe.

Wipe, for those who don't know, is basically a cryptoraphic version of rm. It overwrites the file with random noise, and then removes it. It's handy if you're paranoid.

nothingspecial
April 22nd, 2010, 07:01 PM
This is one for recurring for sure, but I`ll play ...

feh
cmus
GNU screen (byobu)
nano
ffmpeg
mplayer
transcode
wget
wicd-curses
ssh

mkendall
April 22nd, 2010, 07:53 PM
****



It Converts lit files to html.


EDIT: You have got to be kidding me. brain**** is allowed but **** is censored?

EDIT 2: Hm. It appears that brain**** is no longer allowed. When did that happen?

MattBD
April 22nd, 2010, 08:28 PM
For me, the best CLI programs are:

Vim
screen
pine (not that I actually use it as my email client, but it's not bad).

Incidentally, I highly recommend INX (http://inx.maincontent.net/) for those that want to learn more about the command line. It's an Ubuntu-based, CLI-only distro that can run as a live CD or as a Virtualbox or QEMU image. It's pretty eye-opening to see just how much can actually be done from the command-line, and INX is set up to teach you how to use it more effectively.

PurposeOfReason
April 22nd, 2010, 08:32 PM
*vim
*mutt
cursetheweather
*calcurse
*rtorrent
*htop
*ncmpcpp
*wget
*ssh
*vimprobable (use it with text mode so I'll count it)
mplayer

*indicates I use it daily, which is just about all of them

mcduck
April 22nd, 2010, 08:41 PM
Bash, Imagemagick and ncmpc. The first two save me from lots of manual labor and allow me to do my work quicker, while the last one keeps me happy while doing that's still left for me to do. :)

new_tolinux
April 22nd, 2010, 08:48 PM
EDIT 2: Hm. It appears that brain**** is no longer allowed. When did that happen?
A few weeks ago, one of the staff messed up the censor. He/she said it would be solved, but appearantly it's not.

The only program I use is nano (and ofcourse ls, cd, rm, cp, mv etc. but I don't count them as "programs")

thomasaaron
April 22nd, 2010, 09:58 PM
About a week ago I posted a thread with the proposal that it might be fun to 'camp' on the Internet using CLI instead of GUI since most tasks, outside of graphical WWW, can be accomplished via shell now'days. In the thread I listed lots of CLI apps I use and some suggestions on how to really utilize the Internet in a command line only world.

Samalex, I looked but didn't find that post. We ought to talk more about this some time. It's be cool to build a suite of CLI apps.

samalex
April 22nd, 2010, 10:54 PM
Samalex, I looked but didn't find that post. We ought to talk more about this some time. It's be cool to build a suite of CLI apps.

Thomas (sorry, I think I called you Aaron earlier),

The URL to the post is here - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1453527 - sorry I thought I linked to it in my first message :/

But I'm a total nerd for shell and anything command line. I could see a suite of apps, or even a distro geared around command line users with maybe a minimalistic windows manager like Fluxbox or xfce for those times when a GUI is absolutely needed. There are server distros that do this without X, but those are overkill in this case. I'm thinking something even more minimalistic with all the shell apps preinstalled which would make it great for a lower-end system or for someone who wants to run a fully functional Linux box on some VERY old hardware even going back to an 80486.

Using Reconstructor or Ubuntu Customization Kit I wouldn't think it'd be hard to do such a thing with Ubuntu. Hmmm... Ubuntu CLI Edition :)

Update - I found this - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/LowMemorySystems - which gives more info on how to install a minimalistic system without lots of unneeded stuff. May be worth checking out for a slimmer shell-based system. Time to fire-up VirtualBox and give it a try.

Sam

JoeWheeler
April 22nd, 2010, 10:58 PM
****



It Converts lit files to html.


EDIT: You have got to be kidding me. brain**** is allowed but **** is censored?

EDIT 2: Hm. It appears that brain**** is no longer allowed. When did that happen?
I honestly have no idea what the **** after brain could be.

Anyway, alpine is a GREAT email client that is IMAP compatible

samalex
April 22nd, 2010, 10:59 PM
I honestly have no idea what the **** after brain could be.

Anyway, alpine is a GREAT email client that is IMAP compatible

I second this... Alpine is awesome and works great with Gmail via IMAP. If it only had a calendar feature to connect to Google Calendar, that's the one thing I haven't been able to do in shell.

Sam

andrew.46
April 22nd, 2010, 11:16 PM
Hi Joe,


I honestly have no idea what the **** after brain could be.

I suspect it is **** :). Nobody has mention the usenet client slrn yet:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/slrn

Andrew

dragos240
April 23rd, 2010, 12:00 AM
vim
cat
ls
ping
chmod
chroot
youtube-dl
testdisk
C I'm still alive
dd
cp
mv
rm
etc.....

I could keep going but......

benerivo
April 23rd, 2010, 12:04 AM
ncmpcpp
ffmpeg
wicd-curses
get-iplayer
ccrypt
locate
links

Berk
April 23rd, 2010, 12:08 AM
Thomas (sorry, I think I called you Aaron earlier),

The URL to the post is here - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1453527 - sorry I thought I linked to it in my first message :/

But I'm a total nerd for shell and anything command line. I could see a suite of apps, or even a distro geared around command line users with maybe a minimalistic windows manager like Fluxbox or xfce for those times when a GUI is absolutely needed. There are server distros that do this without X, but those are overkill in this case. I'm thinking something even more minimalistic with all the shell apps preinstalled which would make it great for a lower-end system or for someone who wants to run a fully functional Linux box on some VERY old hardware even going back to an 80486.

Using Reconstructor or Ubuntu Customization Kit I wouldn't think it'd be hard to do such a thing with Ubuntu. Hmmm... Ubuntu CLI Edition :)

Update - I found this - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/LowMemorySystems - which gives more info on how to install a minimalistic system without lots of unneeded stuff. May be worth checking out for a slimmer shell-based system. Time to fire-up VirtualBox and give it a try.

Sam


Take a look at http://inx.maincontent.net/ maybe?

PurposeOfReason
April 23rd, 2010, 12:32 AM
I second this... Alpine is awesome and works great with Gmail via IMAP. If it only had a calendar feature to connect to Google Calendar, that's the one thing I haven't been able to do in shell.

Sam
Calcurse can inmport google calendar. Just get your export url, wget it and load calcurse with calcurse -i *.ics. If you're timzones get messed up, I wrote a script for that. ;)

Dayofswords
April 23rd, 2010, 12:39 AM
apt-get moo
its fun =p

wojox
April 23rd, 2010, 12:50 AM
w3m
wget
ssh
irssi
g++
tar
cron
apt-get
yum
espeak
weather (http://geek.phatus.com/2010/01/add-updated-weather-to-your-bash-prompt/)

Sporkman
April 23rd, 2010, 12:58 AM
grep
ssh
tar
rsync
cal
nano
par2
ccrypt
top
ps
df
du

Chronon
April 23rd, 2010, 01:55 AM
I honestly have no idea what the **** after brain could be.

Anyway, alpine is a GREAT email client that is IMAP compatible

You can find it listed in the Examples section of this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language

Ibidem
April 23rd, 2010, 02:29 AM
Vi
mc & mcedit
mpg123
--I find it amusing that connecting to shoutcast from the CLI is ~5sec, while I've had a losing battle using Windoes(nt)
Wordgrinder is worth a mention (CLI word processor); if I may mention a non-native app,
vde 1.96 is perhaps better (DOS word processor, supports rtf/word 5.x-2000/WordPerfect 3, 4, 5, & 6+/WordStar/text; use Dosemu/dosbox)
udhcpc (DHCP client from BusyBox)
sc (for a toy...) CLI spreadsheet

chroot
startx (joking)
aptitude (incl. the "show" command)
links
&
&&
>
|

Sporkman
April 23rd, 2010, 02:41 AM
Bash programming is fun, too.

Very powerful, it is...