CLI and TUI programs
Table of contents
Introduction
Some of my mosed loved CLI and TUI programs.
Communication
- alpine - A text-based email client, friendly for novices but powerful.
- irssi - A modular text mode chat client. It comes with IRC support built in.
- mcabber - A small XMPP (Jabber) console client.
- mutt - A small and very powerful text-mode email client.
- neomutt - A command line mail reader (or MUA). It’s a fork of Mutt with added features.
Development
- ack - A grep-like search tool optimized for source code.
- awk - A domain-specific language designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool.
- diffoscope - A tool for in-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories.
- expect - A tool for automating interactive applications such as telnet, ftp, passwd, fsck, rlogin, tip, etc. Expect really makes this stuff trivial.
- git - A free and open source distributed version control system.
- gitty - Contextual information about your git projects, right on the command-line.
- gitui - Blazing fast terminal-ui for git written in rust.
- make - A tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program’s source files.
- ripgrep - A line-oriented search tool that recursively searches the current directory for a regex pattern.
- sed - Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language.
- tea - A command line tool to interact with Forgejo/Gitea servers.
- tig - A text-mode interface for Git.
- I also use text editors for development.
Embedded
- avrdude - A utility to program AVR microcontrollers.
- minicom - A serial communication program.
- openocd - Debugging, in-system programming and boundary-scan testing for embedded target devices.
File managers
- midnight commander - A free cross-platform orthodox file manager.
- nnn - The unorthodox terminal file manager.
- ranger - A console file manager with VI key bindings.
Fun
- asciiquarium - Enjoy the mysteries of the sea from the safety of your own terminal!
- cmatrix - Terminal based “The Matrix” like implementation.
- cowsay - Configurable talking cow (and a bit more).
- lolcat - No unicorns. But rainbows!
- ponysay - Cowsay reimplemention for ponies.
- sl - A Steam Locomotive runs across your terminal when you type “sl” as you meant to type “ls”.
Internet
- links - A free software text and graphical web browser with a pull-down menu system.
- lynx - A text browser for the World Wide Web.
- newsboat - An RSS/Atom feed reader for the text console. It’s an actively maintained fork of Newsbeuter.
- newsraft - A feed reader with ncurses user interface.
- w3m - A text-based web browser as well as a pager like
more' or
less’. With w3m you can browse web pages through a terminal emulator window.
Multimedia
- alsamixer - A graphical mixer program for the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.
- cmus - Small, fast and powerful console music player for Unix-like operating systems.
- mpg123 - Fast console MPEG Audio Player and decoder library.
Network
- arping - A utility to find out if a specific IP address on the LAN is ‘taken’ and what MAC address owns it.
- arpwatch - A computer software tool for monitoring Address Resolution Protocol traffic on a computer network.
- bmon - Bandwidth monitor and rate estimator.
- iftop - Display bandwidth usage on an interface.
- nethogs - A small ‘net top’ tool. Instead of breaking the traffic down per protocol or per subnet, like most tools do, it groups bandwidth by process.
- nload - A console application which monitors network traffic and bandwidth usage in real time.
Security
- acme.sh - An ACME protocol client written purely in Shell (Unix shell) language.
- checkpw - A program that checks the validity of a users password on a UNIX/PAM-based system.
- gpg - GnuPG is a complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC4880 (also known as PGP).
- nmap - A free and open source utility for network discovery and security auditing.
- bettercap - The Swiss Army knife for WiFi, Bluetooth Low Energy, wireless HID hijacking, CAN-bus and IPv4 and IPv6 networks reconnaissance and MITM attacks.
- ettercap - A comprehensive suite for man in the middle attacks. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on the fly and many other interesting tricks.
- gopass - The slightly more awesome standard unix password manager for teams.
- pass - The standard unix password manager.
- sn0int - A semi-automatic OSINT framework and package manager.
- tcpdump - A powerful command-line packet analyzer; and libpcap, a portable C/C++ library for network traffic capture.
- testssl.sh - A free command line tool which checks a server’s service on any port for the support of TLS/SSL ciphers, protocols as well as recent cryptographic flaws and more.
- wireshark - The world’s foremost network protocol analyzer. It lets you see what’s happening on your network at a microscopic level.
Shells
- ash - A lightweight Unix shell.
- bash - The Bourne Again Shell.
- zsh - A shell designed for interactive use, although it is also a powerful scripting language.
System
- btop - A system resource monitor.
- duf - A Disk Usage/Free Utility - a better ‘df’ alternative.
- gotop - A terminal based graphical activity monitor inspired by gtop and vtop.
- htop - An interactive process viewer.
- iotop - A Python program with a top like UI used to show of behalf of which process is the I/O going on.
- ncdu - A disk usage analyzer with a text-mode user interface.
- proot - A user-space implementation of chroot, mount –bind, and binfmt_misc.
- top - A task manager or system monitor program, found in many Unix-like operating systems, that displays information about CPU and memory utilization.
- usbtop - A top-like utility that shows an estimated instantaneous bandwidth on USB buses and devices.
Terminal
- byobu - A text-based window manager, terminal multiplexer and integrated DevOps environment.
- screen - A full-screen window manager that multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes.
- tmux - An open-source terminal multiplexer for Unix-like operating systems.
- zellij - A terminal workspace. It has the base functionality of a terminal multiplexer but includes many built-in features that would allow users to extend it and create their own personalized environment.
Terminal emulators
- xterm - The standard terminal emulator for the X Window System.
- xfce4-terminal - A lightweight and easy to use terminal emulator application with many advanced features including drop down, tabs, unlimited scrolling, full colors, fonts, transparent backgrounds, and more.
- zoha - Drop down terminal inspired by Tilda.
Text editors
- nano - A text editor for Unix-like computing systems or operating environments using a command line interface.
- neovim - A hyperextensible Vim-based text editor.
- vim - A highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient.
Tools
- asciinema - Record and share your terminal sessions, the simple way.
- busybox - Combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable.
- cal - A command-line utility on a number of computer operating systems including Unix, Plan 9, Inferno and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux that prints an ASCII calendar of the given month or year.
- minify - A minifier package written in Go. It provides HTML5, CSS3, JS, JSON, SVG and XML minifiers and an interface to implement any other minifier.
- rsync - A file transfer program to keep remote files in sync.
- tmate - Instant terminal sharing.
- toybox - Combines many common Linux command line utilities together into a single BSD-licensed executable.
- upterm - Instant Terminal Sharing.