Introduction

Some of my mosed loved and used CLI and TUI programs.

Accessoires

  • baca - A TUI Ebook Reader
  • 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
  • elia - A snappy, keyboard-centric terminal user interface for interacting with large language models

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

Database

  • dolphie - Your single pane of glass for real-time analytics into MySQL/MariaDB & ProxySQL
  • harlequin - The SQL IDE for Your Terminal

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
  • openssh - The premier connectivity tool for remote login with the SSH protocol

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
  • metasploit - The world’s most used penetration testing framework
  • 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
  • wpscan - WPScan WordPress security scanner

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
  • nerdctl - A Docker-compatible CLI for containerd, with support for Compose, Rootless, eStargz, OCIcrypt, IPFS, …
  • ncdu - A disk usage analyzer with a text-mode user interface
  • proot - A user-space implementation of chroot, mount –bind, and binfmt_misc
  • recoverpy - A powerful tool that leverages your system capabilities to recover lost files
  • tiptop){:class=”ext”} - A command-line system monitoring tool in the spirit of top
  • top){:class=”ext”} - 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
  • 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

Comments