Using system text console, you can do everything. Each system has it own commands and tools. It is amazing how developers building great command line apps that fully replace graphical user interface.
Today I will show you very cool command line apps for Linux. Easy to use, fast, small and when you use it you look nerdy.
Files
File managers and file listing.
Midnight Commander
GNU Midnight Commander is a visual file manager, licensed under GNU General Public License and therefore qualifies as Free Software. It’s a feature rich full-screen text mode application that allows you to copy, move and delete files and whole directory trees, search for files and run commands in the subshell. Internal viewer and editor are included.
https://midnight-commander.org/
LSD
This project is a rewrite of GNU ls with lot of added features like colors, icons, tree-view, more formatting options etc. The project is heavily inspired by the super colorls project.
https://github.com/Peltoche/lsd
NNN
n³ The unorthodox terminal file manager.
https://github.com/jarun/nnn
Exa
A modern replacement for ‘ls’.
https://github.com/ogham/exa
System Monitor
Monitor of system resources, cpu, ram, hdd
vtop
Wow such top. So stats. More better than regular top.
https://github.com/MrRio/vtop
bpytop
Linux/OSX/FreeBSD resource monitor.
https://github.com/aristocratos/bpytop
htop
This is htop, a cross-platform interactive process viewer. It is a text-mode application (for console or X terminals) and requires ncurses.
https://htop.dev/
glances
Glances an Eye on your system. A top/htop alternative for GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS and Windows operating systems.
https://github.com/nicolargo/glances
tiptop
tiptop is a command-line system monitoring tool in the spirit of top. It displays various interesting system stats and graphs them. Works on all operating systems.
https://github.com/nschloe/tiptop
Gotop
A terminal based graphical activity monitor inspired by gtop and vtop.
https://github.com/xxxserxxx/gotop
battop
battop is an interactive viewer, similar to top, htop and other *top utilities, but about the batteries installed in your notebook.
https://github.com/svartalf/rust-battop
System Info
System details.
Neofetch
Neofetch is a command-line system information tool written in bash 3.2+. Neofetch displays information about your operating system, software and hardware in an aesthetic and visually pleasing way.
https://github.com/dylanaraps/neofetch
HDD
Disk space.
gdu
Gdu is intended primarily for SSD disks where it can fully utilize parallel processing. However HDDs work as well, but the performance gain is not so huge.
https://github.com/dundee/gdu
duf
Disk Usage/Free Utility – a better ‘df’ alternative.
https://github.com/muesli/duf
Text Editors
Apps to create and edit text files.
Vim
Vim is a greatly improved version of the good old UNIX editor Vi. Many new features have been added: multi-level undo, syntax highlighting, command line history, on-line help, spell checking, filename completion, block operations, script language, etc. There is also a Graphical User Interface (GUI) available. Still, Vi compatibility is maintained, those who have Vi “in the fingers” will feel at home.
https://github.com/vim/vim
Nano
Easy to use text editor.
https://www.nano-editor.org/
Music
Console music players!!!
MusikCube
A cross-platform, terminal-based music player, audio engine, metadata indexer, and server in c++.
https://github.com/clangen/musikcube
Spotify-tui
Spotify for the terminal written in Rust.
https://github.com/Rigellute/spotify-tui
Communication
Books
tuir
Browse Reddit from your terminal.
https://gitlab.com/ajak/tuir
Irssi is a modular text mode chat client. It comes with IRC support built in, and there are third party ICB, SILC, XMPP (Jabber), PSYC and Quassel protocol modules available.
https://github.com/irssi/irssi
rainbowstream
A smart and nice Twitter client on terminal written in Python.
https://github.com/orakaro/rainbowstream
Notes
NB
CLI and local web plain text note‑taking, bookmarking, and archiving with linking, tagging, filtering, search, Git versioning & syncing, Pandoc conversion, + more, in a single portable script.
https://github.com/xwmx/nb
Taskbook
Tasks, boards & notes for the command-line habitat.
https://github.com/klaussinani/taskbook
Web Browser
You can browse websites using console 🙂
Links
Links is a free software text and graphical web browser with a pull-down menu system. It renders complex pages, has partial HTML 4.0 support (including tables and frames and support for multiple character sets such as UTF-8), supports color and monochrome terminals and allows horizontal scrolling.
http://links.twibright.com/
Lynx
Lynx is a customizable text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals. As of 2022, it is the oldest web browser still being maintained, having started in 1992.
https://lynx.invisible-island.net/
browsh
Browsh is a fully-modern text-based browser. It renders anything that a modern browser can; HTML5, CSS3, JS, video and even WebGL. Its main purpose is to be run on a remote server and accessed via SSH/Mosh or the in-browser HTML service in order to significantly reduce bandwidth and thus both increase browsing speeds and decrease bandwidth costs.
https://github.com/browsh-org/browsh
Weather
Wanna check weather in console? No problem!
wttr.in
wttr.in is a console-oriented weather forecast service that supports various information representation methods like terminal-oriented ANSI-sequences for console HTTP clients (curl, httpie, or wget), HTML for web browsers, or PNG for graphical viewers.
https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in
wego
wego is a weather client for the terminal.
https://github.com/schachmat/wego
Various network stats and bandwidth tools for console.
speedtest-cli
Command line interface for testing internet bandwidth using speedtest.net
https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli
bandwhich
This is a CLI utility for displaying current network utilization by process, connection and remote IP/hostname
https://github.com/imsnif/bandwhich
nethogs
NetHogs is 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.
https://github.com/raboof/nethogs
bmon
bmon is a monitoring and debugging tool to capture networking related statistics and prepare them visually in a human friendly way. It features various output methods including an interactive curses user interface and a programmable text output for scripting.
https://github.com/tgraf/bmon
Other
Does not fit in any other category.
MapSCII
MapSCII is a Braille & ASCII world map renderer for your console.
https://github.com/rastapasta/mapscii
Cointop
A fast and lightweight interactive terminal based UI application for tracking cryptocurrencies.
https://github.com/cointop-sh/cointop
epr
CLI Epub Reader.
https://github.com/wustho/epr
