Boxbuddy makes it incredibly easy to use distrobox, a great way to install software that might not be available for your distro, but is available on another distro, or just a way to keep a piece of software in a stable state (like DaVinci Resolve with davincibox).

If you use a “gaming distro”, I’m sure you’ve seen Input Remapper. It’s a neat utility that can create macros for all your peripherals or rebind keys as you like. Want to bind you controller so it works like a mouse? Possible. Want to macro key pressed by using the forward button on your mouse? Possible.

Did you leave Foobar2000 behind when you switched to Linux? Why not give Fooyin a try. It’s a relatively new audio player with aspirations of becoming just as configurable as FB2K. For me replaygain is quite important, and while some other FOSS audio players support it, not many has replaygain generation. And Fooyin does. While also being just as easy to set up and use as Foobar. Worth a look.

GitHub Application Manager (GAM): https://github.com/fmstrat/gam

It’s like apt for installing directly from Github releases. A plug, sure, but I still use it regularly for things like FreeCAD, Cura, OrcaSlicer, and so on.

gnome-network-displays let’s you cast your screen to a wireless display (Miracast) or to a Chromecast device.

It works with KDE no problem and even under Wayland.

It creates a virtual display that can be organized like any other display: unify with another screen or extend the desktop using your DE’s default method/UI. And then it uses standard screen sharing conventions to send content to that virtual display.

I don’t know what kind of dark arts the developer(s) employed to make this possible, but the end result is simple wireless display in Linux that just works! A MUST for using Linux in a business setting.

I really like units. It feels much better to use than the calculator that pops up after a Google search.

~ $ units '190 cm' 'ft;in'
	6 ft + 2.8031496 in

auto-cpufreq to automatic CPU speed & power optimizer to improve battery life for Laptops.

Syncthing for syncing folders and files directly between your devices.

Also whatever software or driver I loaded to make this HP Thunderbolt Docking Station work with Linux.

qpdf is handy for merging PDFs. Command line but quick to learn for most usage.

Steam added an excellent screen capture feature to their overlay, but I like being able to capture my screen anytime, not just when playing games with the steam overlay.

gpu-screen-recorder is the perfect tool for this, you set up a command to run at startup and the software records the last X minutes in the background, with barely any hardware utilization. Add a hotkey for another command that saves the recorded clip to a file, and boom, simple and efficient replay recorder. I’m honestly surprised this app wasn’t mentioned yet.

The Docker Engine makes hosting applications over your network easy, if you have spare hardware I highly recommend setting up your own server.

AutoKey automation / word expander tool.

• I reconfigure ALT + i/j/k/l to ↑←↓→ globally, and more similar shortcuts.
• It expands abbreviations of one’s choice like “gCo” to git commit -m '
• One can assign scripts to abbreviations and hotkeys. E.g., when I press CTRL + Shift + [ it surrounds the selected text with a tag:

text_selected = clipboard.get_selection()
text_input = dialog.input_dialog(title="Wrap with a tag.", message="E.g., type cite to get <cite>x</cite>.", default="")
keyboard.send_key("<delete>")
clipboard.fill_clipboard(f"<{text_input[1]}>{text_selected}</{text_input[1]}>")
keyboard.send_keys("<ctrl>+v")

I’m likely not even harnessing AutoKey’s full capabilities and it’s already absolutely indispensable for being a huge time-saver and annoyance reducer.

- -
✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.

ffmpeg - www.deb-multimedia.org . I edit podcast videos for distribution to subscribers. High-quality video produces very large files but if they’re only going to be watched on laptops, tablets, and phones, I can throw away a lot of bits without noticeably affecting quality on a phone screen.

And nothing does that better or faster than ffmpeg.

I do a fair amount of pentesting and I’m on mobile, so I’ll just list software.

Trufflehog & nosey parker (both kinda suck, but there’s nothing better)

Subfinder

Nuclei

Credmaster

To name a few.

Pinta is the main one that comes to mind. I don’t use it every day, far from it, and that’s a part of why I love it. On the rare occasion that I have to do some image editing, I load up Gimp and then proceed to fight against it for at least a whole day to make it do the simplest of things before finally ragequitting. Then I load up Pinta and actually get the task done in either minutes or hours at most.

It’s like old school MS Paint, but better. Simple, intuitive, no huge learning curve, just enough features to get my nonprofessional tasks done. It should be a distro default.

Aside from ones listed here:

System Tools

• WinApps - Run Windows applications seamlessly integrated into your Linux desktop environment, like native including Adobe products.
• Waydroid - Run Android applications in a container on Linux with full hardware access.
• Topgrade - Upgrade all your system packages and dependencies in one command.
• AM (AppImage Manager) - Easy AppImage management for installing, updating, and organizing portable applications.
• Starship - Fast, customizable cross-platform shell prompt with Git integration and status indicators.
• InShellisense - IDE-style IntelliSense autocomplete and suggestions for your terminal.
• Tabby - Modern terminal emulator with tabs, split panes, and extensive customization options.
• Zeit - Qt GUI frontend for scheduling tasks using at and crontab utilities.
• KWin Minimize2Tray - KDE extension that allows minimizing windows to the system tray instead of taskbar.
• Flameshot - Feature-rich screenshot tool with built-in annotation and editing capabilities.
• CopyQ - Advanced clipboard manager with searchable history and custom scripting support.
• Safing Portmaster - Free open-source application firewall with per-app network control, DNS-over-TLS, and system-wide ad/tracker blocking.

Productivity Tools

• DSNote - Offline speech-to-text, text-to-speech and translation app for note-taking.
• NAPS2 - User-friendly document scanning application with OCR and PDF creation capabilities.
• Morphosis - Simple document converter supporting PDF, Markdown, HTML, DOCX and more formats.
• Obsidian - Powerful knowledge management app with bidirectional linking and graph visualization.
• BeeRef - Minimalist reference image viewer designed for artists and designers.

Media & Entertainment

• Popcorn Time - Stream movies and TV shows via torrent with built-in media player.
• Nicotine+ - Modern Soulseek P2P client for sharing and discovering music files.
• XnView - Versatile image viewer, organizer, and converter supporting hundreds of formats.

Happy to list out the self hosted stuff too if there is interest.

Localsend is rad, super useful: https://localsend.org/

Send any file across different devices over the network. FOSS and fast. Highly recommend.

Qalc. Best calculator ever hands down