Tim’s Tool Shed — My Daily Drivers
During my time as a Red Hat SRE, I’ve developed a stronger appreciation for CLI (adjacent) tools. These are my ride-or-dies.
During my time as a Red Hat SRE, I’ve developed a stronger appreciation for CLI (adjacent) tools. These are my ride-or-dies.
Terminal bandwidth utilization tool
Bandwhich helps me know what all the outgoing and incoming connections on my system are in a dynamic manner. Oftentimes it’s a matter of curiosity, but it also helps to know what my OS is up to at any given point in time. Bandwhich is written in rust and can be installed with cargo. Definitely worth it for the paranoid or the curious.
Use any Linux distribution inside your terminal.
This tool alone has made distrohopping obsolete, typically the appeal of a distribution depends on it’s package manager. I use Fedora Sericea as my workhorse OS but I’ll always need a tool that I might not be able to get with rpm-ostree. Luckily Distrobox was there to save my sanity. Similar to a virtual environment you will see with something like Python, but without it getting gross. Distrobox uses containers out of the box to mount your home directory. I’ll build an image with all the tools I need like Lunar Vim and Bat, all while keeping my host machine clean. You’re not limited to just the basics, you can build custom work environments and alias them for when you need them.
A VIM-inspired file manager for the console
I’ve mentioned this tool before but I can’t help it, it’s too good. I’ll work on an intimidating codebase, not knowing where to begin. Then I open up Ranger, and I explore a little bit and my nervousness melts away with every file I preview. With Ranger, I’m able to ingest a codebase and start making changes within an hour. It’s unlike any tool I’ve used and it’s a tool I intend on using for the rest of my career.
Cross-platform Text Expander written in Rust
I came across Espanso late last year. It has single handedly saved me hours of typing the same email to users abusing our systems. Rather than typing out the same few sentences. I was able to boil down entire emails to a single word. Espanso works with triggers on your local machine and will expand text ANYWHERE, this includes the browser and any remote machines you’re logged into. The possibilites are endless. I have so many mappings and they all are used daily. It’s GPLv3 and is extremely easy to set up.
For those more adventurous, Espanso has templating that allows you to pass in some variables for further customization. If there’s one tool that you pick up from this article, I hope you give this one a shot.
CLOSING
Aside from the basics like tmux, these tools have taken me above and beyond in my day to day productivity. It’s nothing flashy. In tech style often beats substance. However, in my mind, simplicity always emerges victorious. See ya :)
