Give these open source tools a try. Your productivity will definitely increase.

Computer screen with files or windows open

It is true that many people use computers for entertainment. But some people use them for work. Their theory is that computers should help us do things faster, better and more organized. In practice, computers don’t make us more productive without doing a little manual configuration based on each person’s work style.

Kevin Sonney loves designing systems, and this year he introduced 18 different productivity tools in a series of 20 articles, covering not only the networking aspect, but also tools that improve his productivity. All of Kevin’s favorite tools have been collected for this article, and the purpose of each tool is outlined below.

File synchronization

Important documents should be carefully managed.

  • SyncthingSynchronizes files on different devices.equipmentIt could be Linux, Windows or Mac, it could be a server, Android tablet or phone, and so on. The file can be any file you want to synchronize across multiple machines. Syncthing is a lightweight peer-to-peer tool, so you don’t have to pay a service fee, you don’t need a third-party server, and it’s fast.
  • Syncing is one thing, but sometimes you also need help with the files you own. Suppose you want an application to behave differently as a graphical application than as a console application, you can do this by modifying the different configuration files that symbolic links point to, for example.foo-gui 和 .foo-term. This can be done manually, but it can also be scripted, or you can try itGNU Stow.

Email management

We all depend on our emails and inboxes, but few of us seem happy with the way we manage them. If you like working on a terminal, why not manage email on a terminal? Sending and receiving emails on a terminal is one thing, but being able to organize your emails on a terminal is even better. If you’re a typist or a natural script writer, try one of these tools.

  • I use OfflineIMAP to sync my work emails to my laptop every day so I can read them with Mutt. It’s a special tool that does just one thing: make sure your local copy of your email is fully synchronized with your remote inbox. It’s fairly easy to configure and schedule with Cron, and then you can forget it’s there. It’s fairly simple, and you should use it every time you work with IMAP.
  • NotmuchCan index, tag, and search mail messages. If something goes wrong with your inbox, it lets youDon’t needTake a lot of effort to fix it.
  • Vim can send and receive email and manage your calendar.
  • Of course, Emacs can do email and manage your calendar.

Calendar and Contacts

All the Linux systems I’ve used come preloaded with the CAL command. This is a handy little calendar for terminal use, and it is also a great quick check tool. However, it can hardly be called a calendar app. The iCalendar specification (unrelated to Apple’s old desktop calendar) provides rich shared calendar functionality, and while the.ics appointments and events are plain text, there is no workflow to manage them in the terminal. At least, not before Khal and Vdirsyncer.

  • KhalIs console-based reading and writing.icsFile calendar tool.
  • Vdirsyncer is a terminal command that synchronizes online calendars (and contacts) locally. Khal runs locally and vdirSyncer runs remotely so that the remote calendar can be synchronized with the local calendar you manage.
  • Managing contacts can be difficult, but if you use Khard, a terminal command that reads and writes vcard-formatted files, it becomes easy. In turn, these files can be synchronized to a remote server using vdirSyncer (you may already be using khal calendar). This makes calendar and contact management simple, and setting up a personal information management (PIM) server much easier than before.

To-do list

  • There are many ways to organize your day, but one of the easiest is to usetodo.txt, a simple, portable, easy to understand system, even if the device does not have todo.txt installed will not be a problem. The reason todo.txt works is that it’s just a Bash script that runs on almost any device you can find. The process is simple: download the script, install it in your home directory, and start scheduling tasks with a simple command. If you don’t have it installed on your computertodo.shCommand, your to-do list can still be used as a plain text file that you can manually update as needed.
  • Jrnl is a digital notebook that tracks your daily agenda and activities. This is the program you’re looking for if you’re trying to extract newspaper snippet from your desk or write down random thoughts.

Keep in touch

Communication is key, but now more than ever it seems to be about the chat platform. It’s not just a few clients, it’s a few separate networks. How do you manage them? There are two scenarios.

  • If you have too many contacts spread across too many chat networks, then you should try BitlBee, a single chat client that can connect to all other chat networks.
  • Rainbow Stream is a Twitter client that lets you keep up with current events without being distracted by an open web browser.

alerts

Web browsers are good, but sometimes too much of a good thing. You want to be informed, but you don’t want to immerse yourself in the Internet. Because the Internet is built on open specifications and lots of open source technologies, you don’t have to do everything in one interface. There are different clients for different tasks that let you use your preferred interface to get the information you need.

  • Tuir is a Reddit terminal client.
  • Newsboat is an RSS reader.
  • Wego is a weather forecasting tool.
  • Vim helps you access Reddit and Twitter.
  • Emacs lets you keep in touch with Reddit, Twitter and chat clients.

Keep the terminal open

If you’re working with a terminal, what’s the point of turning it off? Get rid of exit and Ctrl+D and keep your console open.

  • Tmux can split your terminal, allow one terminal window to “layer” on top of another, and even keep the same terminal session after moving from one computer to another.
  • DESQview is another way: it is essentially a terminal window manager.

To be continued

The tools listed in this article are just a few of the amazing productivity tools available on Linux terminals. This list will end, but your own list can continue. Find the tools you love, learn them, and use them to your best advantage. Of course, a good tool doesn’t have to increase your productivity: sometimes your favorite command can also be the one that makes you happiest. Your job is to find commands you like and use them to change the world.

Have fun!

Via: opensource.com/article/20/…

By Alan Smithee (lujun9972

This article is originally compiled by LCTT and released in Linux China