Some applications I’ve not seen yet:

Terminal

https://ntorga.com/gzip-bzip2-xz-zstd-7z-brotli-or-lz4/

• lz4 - fastest compression/decompression (several GB/s); compression is good, but not amazing; very little CPU usage
• zstd - very fast compression, fast decompression (few GB/s compression; ~600MB/s for decompression; better or equal compression compared to zip, depending on level)
• cloc <folder> - gets lines of code for a project/folder
• gdu <optional location> - like ncdu, but faster (written in go) - think TreeSize/WinDirStat for the terminal
• stat <file> - built-in application to show the modified, created, etc stats for a file.
• hyperfine - benchmark for binaries - run this in front of a command to have it run multiple times, and show some statistics.
• jpegli - great to recompress JPEG files into smaller filesizes, with only very few/minor visual effects.
• just - used with a Justfile in a project so I can run just to see the commands, or run just test, just clean, just ... to run project-specific commands.
• msedit - ye olde edit.com, reborn! Feels a little bit cursed to use an MS text editor on the terminal, but it’s better for beginners than nano or micro or whatever.
• oxipng - lossless png compression
• pngquant - lossy png compression (it forces the file to use a palette of n colors, which reduces the colors used, so it will affect your files, unlike oxipng.
• upx - compress binary files (indeed - executables only)
• visidata - analyses csv files, and shows some stats. Like Data Wrangler for the terminal
• oxfmt - think “oxidized prettier” (file formatter for programmers)

GUIs

• Whatpulse - I’ve been tracking my keypresses since 2005. not a terminal application, unlike the rest.
• fsearch - Linux alternative to Everything by Voidtools. It will be a little bit different, but it does the job. mlocate package, with the sudo updatedb and locate commands, if you prefer the terminal
• keepassxc - password manager
• speedcrunch - best GUI calculator, IMO. Just a bar for input, and a bunch of stored results above it. Use the ans variable to use the previous answer in the current calculation, like ans*2 to multiply the previous answer. Or use variables, like x=5, y=2, x+y: 7.

May I request for the people that answer, don’t just answer with the name of the program, tell us what it does, why you like it, bonus points if you post a link to where to get it as well.

I’m a relatively new Linux user and I’ve been going through threads that ask the same sort of question and 90% of the answers are just “[app name]” and nothing else. I know I could just search it for myself, but be kind and write a few words extra.

fish - Ever since I’ve made the switch to Linux, the terminal has been part of the experience. And, honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Besides its efficiency, I also very much enjoy how it automatically keeps track of everything I do within. I don’t get that functionality whenever I do something within a GUI. But bash left a lot to be desired in that regard; its history simply didn’t record everything. It was also pretty bare-bones; no syntax highlighting, no auto suggestions etc. Thus, after trying to bend bash (and later zsh) to my will and ultimately being dissatisfied with the janky mess I was left with, I finally gave in to at least give fish a honest try. The rest is history. Heck, fish is the very first thing I install on a machine.