For a list of BASHing data 2 blog posts see the index page. 
Tools of my trades
I've been running Linux as my only OS for 17 years. That's enough time to reflect realistically on what FOSS programs I actually need in my work as data auditor and zoologist, and on the ones I've found useful for everyday personal computing.
What follows is an overview of the programs I use in 2024. This shouldn't be seen as a list of recommendations, because chacun à son goût and YMMV, and also because I have a UNIX-inspired prejudice against complex programs with lots of extra features. I prefer simple programs that do one or a few jobs well.
My OS is MX Linux 23 with Xfce as desktop environment. Note that the CLI utilities are regularly combined in the homemade programs I use in data auditing, and that some of the GUI utilities can or must be used on the command line (e.g. YAD).
Programs marked with an asterisk (*) were installed by me; the others came with MX Linux 23. I sometimes use some of the excellent GUI utilities in MX Linux, like the live USB maker, and when setting up a Linux distro I always download Microsoft fonts with ttf-mscorefonts-installer.
| Program | Role | Type | Usage |
| Claws Mail | email client | GUI | regularly |
| feh | image viewer | GUI | regularly |
| *FileZilla | SFTP client | GUI | regularly |
| Firefox | Web browser | GUI | regularly |
| Geany | text editor | GUI | regularly |
| *GIMP | image editor | GUI | regularly |
| *Google Earth | KML browser | GUI | regularly |
| LibreOffice Writer | word processor | GUI | regularly |
| *QGIS | GIS | GUI | regularly |
| *Sakura | terminal emulator | GUI | regularly |
| Thunar | file management | GUI | regularly |
| Xfce4-screenshooter | screenshots | GUI | regularly |
| *xtrlock | screenlocker | GUI | regularly |
| YAD | dialogs | GUI | regularly |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CUPS | printing | GUI | occasionally |
| *gImageReader | OCR (with *Tesseract) | GUI | occasionally |
| *Gnumeric | spreadsheet viewer | GUI | occasionally |
| guvcview | webcam | GUI | occasionally |
| LibreOffice Impress | presentations | GUI | occasionally |
| *ModernCSV | table editor | GUI | occasionally |
| PDF Arranger | PDF management | GUI | occasionally |
| *ReText | Markdown editor | GUI | occasionally |
| *XSane | scanning | GUI | occasionally |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| *(csvkit)1 | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| *docx2txt | view text in ranger | CLI | regularly |
| *dzen2 | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| GNU AWK | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| (GNU BASH)2 | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| (GNU coreutils)3 | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| *GNU datamash | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| (GNU diffutils)4 | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| GNU grep | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| *gnuplot | data plotter | CLI | regularly |
| *odt2txt | view text in ranger | CLI | regularly |
| GNU sed | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| iconv | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| *links | CLI Web browser | CLI | regularly |
| (poppler-utils)5 | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| pv | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| *ranger | file management | CLI | regularly |
| *translate-shell | translating text | CLI | regularly |
| *uchardet | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| (util-linux)6 | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| *w3m | CLI Web browser | CLI | regularly |
| *w3m-img | view images in ranger | CLI | regularly |
| xclip | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| *xxd | text processing | CLI | regularly |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| *exifprobe | image processing | CLI | occasionally |
| ghostscript | PDF shrinking | CLI | occasionally |
| (GNU findutils)7 | text processing | CLI | occasionally |
| *gron | JSON processing | CLI | occasionally |
| (ImageMagick)8 | image processing | CLI | occasionally |
| *jq | JSON processing | CLI | occasionally |
| *pdfgrep | in-PDF searches | CLI | occasionally |
| ps | system checks | CLI | occasionally |
| *pwgen | string builder | CLI | occasionally |
| *rig | program testing | CLI | occasionally |
| *scrot | screenshots | CLI | occasionally |
| *uuid | UUID processing | CLI | occasionally |
| *vnstat | traffic checks | CLI | occasionally |
| *xlsx2csv | text-ifying Excel files | CLI | occasionally |
| *xmlstarlet | XML processing | CLI | occasionally |
1(csvkit) csvformat, in2csv
2(GNU BASH) eval, printf, read, time, while
3(GNU coreutils) cat, comm, cp, cut, date, echo, head, ls, mv, nl, paste, pr, pwd, rm, seq, shuf, sort, tac, tail, tee, timeout, tr, uniq, wc, yes
4(GNU diffutils) diff
5(poppler-utils) pdftotext
6(util-linux) column, hexdump, rev
7(GNU findutils) xargs
8(ImageMagick) convert, display
UPDATE. After making up this listing I had another look at RSS readers and decided that the Firefox Feedbro extension (GUI) was easier to use than newsboat (CLI), so I've changed over.
Last update: 2024-09-09
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