https://blog.thechases.comenContents © 2025 <a href="mailto:blog@tim.thechases.com">Tim Chase</a> Thu, 02 Oct 2025 19:32:43 GMTNikola (getnikola.com)http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rsshttps://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/Tim Chase<p> Below are a list of programs that can all be used over an SSH connection with no need for an X connection. </p> <!-- TEASER_END --> <ul> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Email">Email</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#RSS">RSS</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Web">Web</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#TextEditing">Text Editing</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Spreadsheet">Spreadsheet/math/calculator</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Calendar">Calendar</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Todo">To-do management</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Music">Music/audio</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Chat">Chat</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Database">Database</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Filesystem">Filesystem</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#VCS">Version control</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Addressbook">Addressbook</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Games">Games</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Torrents">Torrents</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Admin">Admin</a></li> <li><a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/#Misc">Miscellaneous</a></li> </ul> <hr> <dl> <dt><a id="Email">Email</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailx"><code>mail</code></a> (command-line; uses local mailboxes)</li> <li><a href="http://www.mutt.org"><code>mutt</code></a> (full-screen; uses local mailboxes, POP3, or IMAP)</li> <li><a href="http://instinct.org/elm/"><code>elm</code></a> (full-screen; uses local mailboxes, may support POP3/IMAP)</li> <li><a href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/nmh/"><code>mh</code>/<code>nmh</code></a> (mail-handler/new-mail-handler; command-line; uses "MH" format, supports POP3 via fetchmail)</li> <li><a href="http://www.washington.edu/pine/">pine</a>/<a href="http://www.washington.edu/alpine/"><code>alpine</code></a> (full-screen; uses local mailboxes, POP3, or IMAP)</li> <li><a href="http://docs.offlineimap.org/en/latest/MANUAL.html"><code>offlineimap</code></a></li> <li>and many others</li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="RSS">RSS</a>:</dt> <dd> <ul> <li><a href="http://raggle.org">Raggle</a></li> <li><a href="http://synflood.at/newsbeuter.html"><code>newsbeuter</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://kiza.kcore.de/software/snownews/"><code>snownews</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.codezen.org/nrss/"><code>NRSS</code></a>/<a href="http://www.codezen.org/canto/"><code>Canto</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email"><code>rss2email</code></a>/<a href="https://github.com/rcarmo/rss2imap"><code>rss2imap</code></a></li> <li><strike>Google Reader</strike> supports an on-line reader (the Mobile version should be usable in any console browser)</li> </ul> </dd> <dt><a id="Web">Web</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li><a href="http://lynx.browser.org/"><code>lynx</code></a> (the classic full-screen text-browser)</li> <li><a href="http://links.sourceforge.net/"><code>links</code>/<code>links2</code></a> (a full-screen text-browser with more visual layout engine)</li> <li><a href="http://elinks.or.cz/"><code>elinks</code></a> (a full-screen text-browser with more visual layout engine)</li> <li><a href="http://w3m.sourceforge.net/"><code>w3m</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.eklhad.net/linux/app/"><code>edbrowse</code></a> (it's an editor, it's a browser, it's command-line)</li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="TextEditing">Text Editing</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li><a href="http://vim.org"><code>vi</code>/<code>vim</code></a> (the classic full-screen text-editor)</li> <li><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/"><code>emacs</code></a> (another popular and extensible choice in full-screen text-editors)</li> <li><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/ed/"><code>ed</code></a> (the classic command-line text editor)</li> <li><a href="http://www.nano-editor.org/"><code>nano</code></a> (a simple full-screen editor)</li> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_(text_editor)"><code>pico</code></a> (a simple full-screen editor)</li> <li><a href="http://www.eklhad.net/linux/app/"><code>edbrowse</code></a> (it's like <code>ed</code> on steroids)</li> <li>and countless others</li> </ul> <p> these can be used in concert with various markup syntax such as <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>, <a href="http://w3c.org">HTML</a>, <a href="http://www.docbook.org">DocBook</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX">LaTeX</a>, etc to produce publishable documents; you can use packages like <a href="http://www.winfield.demon.nl/"><code>antiword</code></a> or wordview ("<a href="http://wvware.sourceforge.net/"><code>wv</code></a>") to convert .DOC files to a usable format. </p> </dd> <dt><a id="Spreadsheet">Spreadsheet/math/calculator</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li>Spreadsheet: <ul> <li><a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/financial/spreadsheet/"><code>sc</code></a> (a simple full-screen spreadsheet with vi-like keybindings)</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im"><code>sc-im</code></a> <span title="Thanks to Charlie Kester for finding this one for me">(like <code>sc</code> above but with the ability to import/export xls/xlsx files)</span></li> <li><a href="http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/slsc.html"><code>slsc</code></a> (based on <code>sc</code>)</li> <li><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/"><code>oleo</code></a> (a simple full-screen spreadsheet with a more Emacs-like feel)</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/zaphar/sheetsui">SheetsUI</a></li> </ul> </li> <li>Math: <ul> <li><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/"><code>Octave</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.r-project.org/"><code>R</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.scilab.org/"><code>scilab</code></a></li> </ul> </li> <li>Graphing: <ul> <li><a href="http://www.gnuplot.info/"><code>gnuplot</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.graphviz.org/"><code>graphviz</code></a></li> </ul> </li> <li>Calculator <ul> <li><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/bc/"><code>bc</code></a> (a simple command-line calculator)</li> <li><a href="http://python.org"><code>python</code></a> (the full power of Python, at a command-line)</li> </ul> </li> </ul> </dd> <dt><a id="Calendar">Calendar</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li><a href="https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=calendar&amp;sektion=1"><code>calendar</code></a> (show events on given days)</li> <li><a href="http://www.roaringpenguin.com/products/remind">remind</a> (like the previous <code>calendar</code> program on steroids)</li> <li><a href="http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?cal"><code>cal</code></a> (display a calendar)</li> <li><a href="http://pcal.sourceforge.net/"><code>pcal</code></a> (good for printing)</li> <li><a href="http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?cron"><code>cron</code></a> (for scheduling repeated tasks)</li> <li><a href="http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?at"><code>at</code></a> (for scheduling a single job sometime in the future)</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/insanum/gcalcli"><code>gcalcli</code></a> (interact with Google Calendar from the command-line)</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/pimutils/khal"><code>khal</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://mencal.kyberdigi.cz/english.html"><code>mencal</code></a> and <a href="https://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/mencal2.html"><code>mencal2</code></a> (menstruation calendars)</li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="Todo">To-do/time management</a>:</dt> <dd><a href="http://swapoff.org/DevTodo"><code>devtodo</code></a></dd> <dd><a href="http://taskwarrior.org">TaskWarrior</a></dd> <dd><a href="http://tim.thechases.com/bvi/tt.py">TimeTracker</a> (a simple command-line time-tracker in the spirit of many VCS tools, written by yours-truely in response to <a href="http://www.spinics.net/lists/blinux/msg12722.html">this</a> post, and somewhat documented <a href="http://www.spinics.net/lists/blinux/msg12730.html">here</a>)</dd> <dt><a id="Music">Music/audio</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li>Playback <ul> <li><a href="https://cmus.github.io/"><code>cmus</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://mpg321.sourceforge.net/"><code>mpg321</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://musicpd.org" title="Music Player Daemon"><code>mpd</code>/<code>mpc</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.mpg123.de/"><code>mpg123</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://linuxcommand.gds.tuwien.ac.at/man_pages/ogg1231.html"><code>ogg123</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://6xq.net/pianobar/"><code>pianobar</code></a> (command-line Pandora client)</li> <li><a href="https://freeshell.de/~bolangi/cgi1/nama.cgi/00home.html"><code>nama</code></a> (music recording and editing)</li> <li>and many others</li> </ul> </li> <li>Editing/recording <ul> <li><a href="http://sox.sourceforge.net/"><code>sox</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://www.eca.cx/ecasound/"><code>ecasound</code></a></li> </ul> </li> <li>Volume control <ul> <li><a href="http://www.jpj.net/~trevor/aumix.html"><code>aumix</code></a></li> </ul> </li> <li>Podcatchers <ul> <li><a href="http://wiki.github.com/jgoerzen/hpodder/"><code>hpodder</code></a></li> </ul> </li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="Chat">Chat</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li><a href="http://www.pidgin.im"><code>finch</code></a> (a console version of Gaim/Pidgin)</li> <li><a href="http://thekonst.net/centericq/"><code>centericq</code></a> (support for ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, IRC, MSN, Gadu-Gadu and Jabber protocols)</li> <li><a href="http://site.n.ml.org/info/naim/"><code>naim</code></a> (support for AIM, ICQ, IRC, and the lily CMC protocols)</li> <li><a href="http://irssi.org/"><code>irssi</code></a> (popular IRC client)</li> <li><a href="http://weechat.org/"><code>weechat</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://gtmess.sourceforge.net/"><code>gtmess</code></a> (MSN client)</li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="Database">Database</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li><a href="http://postgresql.org"><code>psql</code></a> interface to PostgreSQL</li> <li><a href="http://mysql.com"><code>mysql</code></a> interface to MySQL</li> <li><a href="http://www.sqlite.org/"><code>sqlite</code></a> interface to the sqlite database</li> <li>all the major databases have command-line clients</li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="Filesystem">Filesystem</a></dt> <dd> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/mc/">Midnight Commander</a> (<code>mc</code>)</li> <li><a href="http://ranger.nongnu.org/"><code>ranger</code></a></li> </ul> </dd> <dt><a id="VCS">Version control</a>:</dt> <dd>I currently use git, Mercurial, Bazaar, Subversion and RCS depending on the project context<ul> <li>Distributed VCS <ul> <li><a href="http://git-scm.org"><code>git</code> (a fast, powerful patchwork of scripts and commands)</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/">mercurial (<code>hg</code>)</a> (fast, powerful, predictable, and mostly written in Python)</li> <li><a href="http://bazaar-vcs.org/"><code>bazaar</code></a> (fast, powerful, predictable, and purely written in Python)</li> <li><a href="http://darcs.net/"><code>darcs</code></a> (slower, and less popular)</li> </ul> </li><li>Centralized VCS <ul> <li><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/">subversion (<code>svn</code>)</a> (removes some of the annoyances of CVS and more extensible)</li> <li><a href="http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/"><code>cvs</code></a>/<a href="http://www.openbsd.org/opencvs/">OpenCVS</a> (the classic, rapidly being replaced by Subversion)</li> <li><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/"><code>rcs</code></a> (not bad for one developer and one text file, but doesn't scale nicely)</li> </ul> </li></ul></dd> <dt><a id="Addressbook">Addressbook</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li><a href="http://abook.sourceforge.net/"><code>abook</code></a></li> <li><a href="http://rolo.sourceforge.net/"><code>rolo</code></a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/scheibler/khard"><code>khard</code></a></li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="Games">Games</a>:</dt> <dd><ul> <li>the <a href="http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/BSD_games">bsdgames</a> package in Debian provides several (I'm a sucker for <a href="http://www.lava.net/cgi-bin/bsdi-man?proto=1.1&amp;query=cribbage"><code>cribbage</code></a>)</li> <li>the <a href="http://frotz.homeunix.org/frotz/"><code>frotz</code></a> package gives access to most <a href="http://mirror.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive.html">text-adventures</a></li> <li><a href="http://nethack.org"><code>nethack</code></a></li> <li>and oodles of other games</li> </ul></dd> <dt><a id="Torrents">Torrents</a>:</dt> <dd><a href="http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/"><code>rtorrent</code></a></dd> <dd><a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Aria2"><code>aria2c</code></a></dd> </dl> <dt><a id="Admin">Admin</a>:</dt> <dd> <ul> <li><code>top</code>, <code>ps</code>, <code>kill</code>, <code>who</code>, <code>last</code></li> <li><code>ping</code>, <code>traceroute</code>, <code>dig</code>, <code>ifconfig</code>, <code>ip</code>, <code>netstat</code>, <code>nslookup</code></li> <li><code>openssl</code>, <code>ssh</code>, <code>sftp</code>, <code>scp</code>, <code>rsync</code></li> <li><a href="http://guichaz.free.fr/iotop/"><code>iotop</code></a> an I/O monitor like "top"</li> </ul> </dd> <dt><a id="Misc">Miscellaneous</a>:</dt> <dd> <ul> <li><code>weather</code></li> </ul> </dd> <p> I also find that using "<a href="http://tmux.sourceforge.net/"><code>tmux</code></a>" or GNU "<a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/"><code>screen</code></a>" vital to being productive, as I can do many, many things all at the same time, each in their own window. It also allows me to disconnect and then reconnect from another machine later, resuming where I left off. </p>accessibilitycommand lineconsoleedhttps://blog.thechases.com/posts/cli/software-for-a-command-line-world/Tue, 26 May 2015 21:04:51 GMT