Textbook of Linux

304 entries

Software

Backup

• BorgBackup — A deduplicating backup program with compression and encryption.
• rclone — rsync for cloud storage.
• restic — A fast, secure, deduplicating backup program.
• rsync — A fast, versatile file-copying tool.
• Timeshift — A system restore utility for Linux.

Browser

• Brave Browser — A privacy-focused web browser based on Chromium.
• Lynx — A text-based web browser.
• qutebrowser — A keyboard-driven web browser with vi-like commands.

Build system

• Apache Maven — A software project management tool for Java.
• Bazel — A scalable build and test tool.
• CMake — A cross-platform meta-build system.
• GNU Make — The classic Unix build automation tool.
• Gradle — A flexible build automation tool for the JVM.
• Meson — An open-source build system focused on speed and ease of use.
• Ninja — A small, fast build system.

CI/CD

• Argo CD — A declarative GitOps continuous-delivery tool for Kubernetes.
• Drone — A container-native continuous delivery system.
• GitLab — A self-hostable DevOps platform with CI/CD built in.
• Jenkins — An automation server for continuous integration and delivery.
• Tekton — A Kubernetes-native framework for building CI/CD pipelines.

CLI tools

• 7-Zip (p7zip) — A high compression-ratio archive program.
• aria2 — A multi-protocol, multi-source command-line download utility.
• bat — A cat clone with syntax highlighting and Git integration.
• delta — A syntax-highlighting pager for git, diff, and grep output.
• eza — A modern replacement for ls.
• fd — A simple, fast alternative to find.
• fzf — A general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder.
• GNU awk (gawk) — A pattern-scanning and text-processing language.
• GNU coreutils — The GNU implementations of basic Unix utilities.
• GNU grep — The GNU implementation of grep.
• GNU sed — The GNU stream editor.
• GNU tar — The standard Unix archiver.
• GNU Wget — A non-interactive network downloader.
• gzip — The classic Unix compression utility.
• htmlq — jq for HTML — a command-line HTML element selector.
• jq — A command-line JSON processor.
• just — A handy way to save and run project-specific commands.
• less — An interactive terminal pager.
• ripgrep — A fast recursive grep replacement written in Rust.
• tldr — Community-maintained simplified man pages.
• wl-clipboard — Command-line clipboard utilities for Wayland.
• xclip — A command-line interface to the X11 clipboard.
• XZ Utils — A high-compression archive utility.
• yq — A command-line YAML, JSON, XML, CSV, and TOML processor.
• zoxide — A smarter cd command that learns your habits.
• Zstandard (zstd) — A real-time compression algorithm with a wide tunable range.

Communication

• Element — A Matrix client for secure messaging.
• GNOME Evolution — A personal information manager and email client for GNOME.
• irssi — A modular text-mode IRC client.
• Mumble — A low-latency, high-quality voice chat application.
• Mutt — A small but powerful terminal-based email client.
• Signal — An end-to-end encrypted messaging app.
• WeeChat — A fast, light, and extensible chat client.

Containers

• BuildKit — A toolkit for building container images.
• containerd — An industry-standard container runtime.
• Docker — A platform for packaging and running applications in containers.
• Docker Compose — Define and run multi-container Docker applications.
• Helm — The package manager for Kubernetes.
• k3s — A lightweight Kubernetes distribution.
• kind — Kubernetes in Docker.
• Kubernetes — A container orchestration system for clusters.
• minikube — A local Kubernetes cluster for development.
• Podman — A daemonless container engine compatible with the Docker CLI.

Data

• Apache Cassandra — A wide-column distributed NoSQL database.
• Apache CouchDB — A document database with a built-in HTTP API.
• Elasticsearch — A distributed search and analytics engine.
• InfluxDB — A time-series database for metrics, events, and IoT data.
• MariaDB — A community-developed fork of MySQL.
• Meilisearch — A fast, easy-to-use search engine for application-side search.
• MongoDB — A document-oriented NoSQL database.
• PostgreSQL — An advanced open-source relational database.
• Redis — An in-memory data structure store.
• SQLite — A small, embeddable, in-process SQL database.

Desktop

• awesome — A highly configurable, framework window manager.
• bspwm — A tiling window manager that arranges windows as a binary tree.
• Budgie — A modern, minimalist desktop environment from Solus.
• Cinnamon — A traditional desktop environment developed for Linux Mint.
• dwm — A dynamic window manager from suckless.
• GNOME — A free desktop environment focused on simplicity.
• Hyprland — A dynamic tiling Wayland compositor with smooth animations.
• i3 window manager — A tiling window manager controlled from the keyboard.
• KDE Plasma — A flexible, customisable desktop environment.
• LXQt — A lightweight Qt-based desktop environment.
• MATE — A continuation of the GNOME 2 desktop.
• Mozilla Firefox — A free and open-source web browser.
• Openbox — A lightweight, highly configurable X11 window manager.
• Redshift — Adjusts the colour temperature of your screen by time of day.
• Sway — An i3-compatible Wayland compositor.
• xmonad — A tiling window manager configured in Haskell.

DevOps

• Ansible — An agentless configuration management and orchestration tool.
• Consul — A service discovery and configuration tool for distributed systems.
• etcd — A distributed key-value store for critical config data.
• OpenStack — A free and open-source cloud computing platform.
• Pulumi — Infrastructure as code in real programming languages.
• Puppet — A model-driven configuration management system.
• Salt — An event-driven automation and configuration management framework.
• Terraform — Infrastructure as code for cloud and on-premises resources.
• Vagrant — A tool for building and managing virtual machine environments.

Developer tools

• direnv — A shell extension that loads environment variables per-directory.
• ESLint — A pluggable linter for JavaScript and TypeScript.
• GCC — The GNU Compiler Collection.
• Git — A distributed version control system.
• GTK — A free cross-platform widget toolkit.
• LLVM and Clang — A modular compiler toolchain and C/C++ frontend.
• Prettier — An opinionated code formatter for many languages.
• Qt — A cross-platform application development framework.
• ShellCheck — A static analysis tool for shell scripts.
• shfmt — A formatter for shell scripts.
• tree-sitter — An incremental parsing system used by many editors.

Distribution

• Alpine Linux — A small, security-oriented Linux distribution based on musl libc.
• Arch Linux — A rolling-release Linux distribution that ships only what you install.
• Debian — A non-commercial, community-driven Linux distribution.
• Fedora — A community-driven Linux distribution sponsored by Red Hat.
• Gentoo — A flexible, source-based Linux distribution.
• Kali Linux — A Debian-based distribution for penetration testing and security.
• Linux Mint — An Ubuntu-based distribution focused on a familiar desktop.
• Manjaro — A user-friendly Arch-based rolling-release distribution.
• NixOS — A purely functional Linux distribution built on Nix.
• openSUSE — A community Linux distribution sponsored by SUSE.
• Raspberry Pi OS — A Debian-based distribution for the Raspberry Pi.
• Slackware — The oldest still-active Linux distribution.
• Ubuntu — A user-friendly Debian-based Linux distribution.

Documentation

• Asciidoctor — A fast text processor and publishing toolchain for AsciiDoc.
• Doxygen — An automatic source-code documentation generator.
• Graphviz — A graph visualisation toolkit.
• mdBook — A utility for creating modern online books from Markdown.
• MkDocs — A fast static site generator for project documentation.
• PlantUML — A tool for drawing UML diagrams from text.
• Sphinx — A documentation generator originally built for Python.

Editor

• GNU Emacs — An extensible, self-documenting text editor.
• GNU nano — A small, beginner-friendly terminal text editor.
• Helix — A post-modern modal text editor.
• micro — A modern, intuitive terminal-based text editor.
• Neovim — A modernised fork of Vim with first-class scripting.
• Vim — A modal text editor descended from vi.
• Visual Studio Code (Code – OSS) — An open-source code editor with rich extension support.

File manager

• Dolphin — KDE's file manager.
• GNOME Files (Nautilus) — The default file manager for GNOME.
• GNU Midnight Commander — A text-based, two-pane file manager.
• ranger — A console file manager with vi keybindings.
• Thunar — The file manager for the Xfce desktop.

Game development

• Godot Engine — A free and open-source 2D and 3D game engine.

Graphics

• Blender — A free 3D creation suite.
• darktable — A free RAW photo workflow application.
• feh — A fast, lightweight image viewer for X11.
• Flameshot — A powerful, friendly screenshot tool.
• FreeCAD — A parametric 3D CAD modeller.
• GIMP — A free raster image editor.
• ImageMagick — A command-line image manipulation toolkit.
• Inkscape — A professional vector-graphics editor.
• Krita — A free digital painting application.
• OpenSCAD — A programmer's solid 3D CAD modeller.
• scrot — A simple X11 command-line screenshot utility.

Kernel

• Linux kernel — The kernel at the heart of the Linux operating system.

Language

• .NET — A free, cross-platform application framework from Microsoft.
• Bun — A fast all-in-one JavaScript runtime, bundler, test runner, and package manager.
• Clojure — A modern Lisp dialect for the JVM.
• Crystal — A statically typed, compiled language with Ruby-like syntax.
• Deno — A modern runtime for JavaScript and TypeScript.
• Elixir — A dynamic, functional language for the Erlang VM.
• Erlang/OTP — A functional language built for concurrent, fault-tolerant systems.
• GNU Octave — A high-level interpreted language for numerical computations.
• Go — A statically typed, compiled language with first-class concurrency.
• Haskell — A purely functional, statically typed programming language.
• Julia — A high-performance language for technical computing.
• Kotlin — A modern, statically typed language for the JVM and other targets.
• Lua — A small, embeddable scripting language.
• Nim — An efficient, expressive, statically typed compiled language.
• Node.js — A JavaScript runtime built on Chrome's V8 engine.
• OCaml — A statically typed functional language with a powerful module system.
• OpenJDK — The reference implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition.
• Perl — A high-level, general-purpose programming language.
• Python — A general-purpose programming language with batteries included.
• R — A language and environment for statistical computing.
• Ruby — A dynamic, object-oriented programming language.
• Rust — A systems programming language focused on safety and concurrency.
• Scala — A statically typed language combining OOP and functional programming.
• Zig — A general-purpose programming language and toolchain.

Media

• Ardour — A professional digital audio workstation.
• Audacity — A multi-track audio editor and recorder.
• FFmpeg — A complete cross-platform multimedia framework.
• HandBrake — An open-source video transcoder.
• Jellyfin — A free and open-source media server.
• Kodi — A free media player and home theatre application.
• LMMS — A free, cross-platform music production studio.
• mpv — A minimalist command-line media player.
• MuseScore — A free music notation and composition program.
• OBS Studio — Free software for video recording and live streaming.
• OpenShot — A simple, free, open-source video editor.
• Shotcut — A free, cross-platform, open-source video editor.
• VLC media player — A free cross-platform media player.

Messaging

• Apache Kafka — A distributed event streaming platform.
• Eclipse Mosquitto — A lightweight MQTT broker.
• RabbitMQ — A message broker that implements AMQP, MQTT, and STOMP.

Networking

• Apache HTTP Server — A widely deployed open-source web server.
• bandwhich — A terminal bandwidth utilisation tool written in Rust.
• BIND — The Berkeley Internet Name Domain server.
• Caddy — A modern web server with automatic HTTPS.
• curl — A command-line tool and library for transferring data with URLs.
• dnsmasq — A lightweight DNS forwarder, DHCP server, and TFTP server.
• Dovecot — An IMAP and POP3 server for Linux/Unix.
• HAProxy — A reliable, high-performance TCP/HTTP load balancer.
• iftop — A real-time bandwidth monitor for the terminal.
• lighttpd — A lightweight, fast web server.
• Mosh — A robust, mobile-friendly remote shell.
• NetHogs — A bandwidth monitor that groups by process.
• NGINX — A high-performance web server, reverse proxy, and load balancer.
• OpenSSH — A free implementation of the SSH protocol suite.
• OpenVPN — A flexible, mature SSL/TLS-based VPN.
• Pi-hole — A DNS sinkhole that blocks ads and trackers network-wide.
• Postfix — A widely deployed mail transfer agent.
• tcpdump — A command-line packet analyser.
• Traefik — A cloud-native edge router with auto-discovery.
• Unbound — A validating, recursive, caching DNS resolver.
• vnstat — A console-based network traffic monitor.
• WireGuard — A modern, fast VPN protocol and implementation.
• Wireshark — A graphical network protocol analyser.

Observability

• Grafana — A dashboarding and visualisation platform for time-series data.
• Grafana Loki — A horizontally scalable log aggregation system.
• Jaeger — A distributed tracing system.
• Kibana — A visualisation and dashboard tool for Elasticsearch.
• OpenTelemetry — A vendor-neutral observability framework.
• Prometheus — A metrics-based monitoring system and time-series database.
• VictoriaMetrics — A fast, cost-efficient time-series database compatible with Prometheus.

Office

• Ghostscript — An interpreter for the PostScript and PDF languages.
• Joplin — An open-source note-taking and to-do application.
• LibreOffice — A complete free office suite.
• Logseq — An open-source outliner notebook for knowledge management.
• Mozilla Thunderbird — A free email and calendar client.
• Nextcloud — A self-hosted file hosting and collaboration platform.
• ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors — A free office suite focused on Microsoft Office compatibility.
• Pandoc — A universal document converter.
• Poppler — A PDF rendering library.
• Taskwarrior — A command-line task manager.

Package manager

• Flatpak — A sandboxed application distribution framework for Linux.
• Homebrew — A package manager for macOS (and Linux).
• Snap (Snapcraft) — Canonical's universal application packaging system.

Security

• Bitwarden — An open-source password manager with optional self-hosting.
• GnuPG — A free implementation of the OpenPGP standard.
• HashiCorp Vault — A tool for secrets management.
• KeePassXC — A cross-platform password manager.
• Keycloak — An open-source identity and access management server.
• OpenSSL — A cryptography toolkit and TLS library.
• pass — The standard Unix password manager.
• Tor — Free software for anonymous communication.
• Trivy — A vulnerability scanner for containers and IaC.
• Vaultwarden — A Rust reimplementation of the Bitwarden server.

Shell

• fish shell — A user-friendly shell with sensible defaults.
• GNU Bash — The default login shell on most Linux distributions.
• Starship — A minimal, fast, customisable shell prompt.
• Z shell (Zsh) — An interactive shell with extensive customisation and completion.

Storage

• Btrfs — A copy-on-write filesystem with snapshots and transparent compression.
• Ceph — A unified, distributed storage system.
• ext4 — The default filesystem on most Linux distributions.
• MinIO — High-performance, S3-compatible object storage.
• OpenZFS — A combined volume manager and filesystem with strong integrity guarantees.
• Syncthing — Continuous file synchronisation between devices.
• XFS — A high-performance journaling filesystem.

System

• ALSA — The Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.
• brightnessctl — A small utility to control device brightness.
• cron — The classic Unix time-based job scheduler.
• CUPS — The Common Unix Printing System.
• GParted — A graphical partition editor.
• GRUB — The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader.
• htop — An interactive process viewer for the terminal.
• JACK Audio Connection Kit — A low-latency audio server for professional audio.
• Mesa — The open-source OpenGL, Vulkan, and graphics driver stack.
• OpenRC — A dependency-based init system used by Gentoo and Alpine.
• PipeWire — A modern multimedia framework for audio and video.
• procps-ng — A set of utilities that read /proc.
• PulseAudio — A network-capable sound server.
• systemd — A system and service manager for Linux.
• systemd-boot — A simple UEFI boot manager.
• util-linux — A set of essential Linux system utilities.
• Wayland — A modern replacement for the X Window System protocol.
• Xorg / X.Org Server — The X Window System server.

Terminal

• Alacritty — A fast, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator.
• GNOME Terminal — The default terminal emulator on GNOME.
• GNU screen — The original terminal multiplexer.
• Konsole — KDE's terminal emulator.
• tmux — A terminal multiplexer.

Virtualisation

• Proxmox VE — An open-source server virtualisation management platform.
• QEMU — A generic and open source machine emulator and virtualiser.
• VirtualBox — A free type-2 hypervisor for desktop virtualisation.

Web

• Angular — A TypeScript-based web application framework.
• Astro — A web framework for content-driven sites.
• Django — A high-level Python web framework.
• esbuild — An extremely fast JavaScript bundler.
• Express.js — A minimal Node.js web framework.
• FastAPI — A modern, fast Python framework for building APIs.
• Flask — A lightweight Python web microframework.
• htmx — A small library for dynamic HTML without a JavaScript framework.
• Hugo — A fast static site generator written in Go.
• Jekyll — A static site generator powering GitHub Pages.
• Laravel — A PHP web framework with expressive syntax.
• Next.js — A React framework for production.
• Nuxt — A Vue.js framework with SSR, file-based routing, and modules.
• React — A JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
• Ruby on Rails — A full-stack Ruby web framework with strong opinions.
• Svelte — A compiler that turns components into vanilla JavaScript.
• Vite — A fast frontend build tool with native ESM dev server.
• Vue.js — A progressive JavaScript framework for building UIs.
• Webpack — A static module bundler for modern JavaScript applications.
• WordPress — A widely-deployed PHP-based content management system.