This is a list of native software that I maintain for my own reference.
If a program appears here, it means it's useful enough for me to use it, it does not necessarily mean it's great (though many are).
Resources:
alacritty a configurable, fast terminal written in rust
prezto is a zsh configuration framework that I like way better than oh-my-zsh. minimal enough to be fast but still with tons of useful features.
neovim the editor I use for everything
nushell an interesting new approach to a shell. not sold on it yet.
bat a file dumper like cat. particularly useful for git diffs and displaying non-printable data.
tokei is wc -l on steroids.
tealdeer an incredibly useful summary of man pages. Executable is normally called tldr.
grex generate regex strings from examples.
zoxide fast directory switcher built around saving a list of directories to a database.
fd another rust tool, this time for finding files, it is unreasonably fast.
starship generates terminal prompts which are incredibly easy to configure. Currently used in my .zshrc (together with prezto).
ueberzug an extremely hacky method for drawing images over terminal windows. Vastly inferior alternative to sixel, but works on anything (sort of).
screen is about the simplest option for session management, doesn't support true color though.
zellij is a modern session manager which is much closer to feature parity with tmux than screen. Configuration options are a bit lacking.
i3 the "standard" window manager. not necessarily the best, but it's very available, customizable, can be installed and runs on anything.
swaywm the Wayland version of i3. don't try running on nvidia
arandr is a GUI that let's you arange and configure displays, and save an xrandr script that executes your new config. pretty much mandatory if you are using a window manager
rofi configurable launcher for windows managers
picom once known as compton, for making windows transparent. I was never happy with how this looked and don't use it now.
polybar a status bar for window managers. flexible with lots of features. a pain in the ass to build on systems that don't already package it (debian)
dunst a minimal but highly configuration notification daemon.
nmcli is the CLI to NetworkManager the most common linux network manager.
nmtui is a TUI to NetworkManager. useful especially for adding connections
bandwhich a nifty network utilization monitor. Very helpful for knowing what programs are doing.
ranger is a TUI file browser. if set up correctly can display full images. useful if you need to quickly browse through files while viewing the contents.
pacui an excellent TUI front-end for pacman and the AUR. particularly useful when searching for packages or even which files belong to which package.
inxi an invaluable tool for getting system information. obviates the need for lscpu and all those other ls* commands.
bpytop pretty TUI system monitor. great for hardware status, not as good as htop for managing processes
bottom another powerful alternative to htop written in rust. Executable is normally called btm.
nvtop like htop but for nvidia GPU's. Includes a nice line graph.
kmon a TUI kernel monitor. provides easy visibility into a bunch of stuff which is otherwise kind of hard to find
lm_sensors just what it sounds like, access to sensors. use sensors-detect and sensors.
conky a flexible C++ program for displaying system information. Can also be displayed in background of i3 without its own window. ***TODO*** make a config for this!
piper graphical tool for configuring input devices such as gaming mice.
lazydocker a TUI for managing dockers. Many common docker operations are a huge pain in the ass without it.
mpv a very minimalistic media player. great when used from other applications
vlc the original
zathura vim-like PDF reader
scrot for taking screenshots
flameshot the most elaborate screen capture tool
peek for recording screen gifs. written in some obscure C#-like language called Vala
alsamixer a TUI for adjusting sound
PulseAudio linux sound middleware. pretty powerful, you should probably use it. has lots of front-ends
castero a terminal based podcast player.
lutris aggregates ways of launching games on linux: steam, epic, gog, emulators, native games, everything.
GluriousEggroll is some dude that compiles proton with all bleeding edge dependencies. Easy to install and can do some seemingly miraculous fixes.
At some point this will get its own dotfiles, but for now...
sxmo postmarketOS/alpine distribution for phones.