Productivity Tools

Tools philosophy: KISS, does what I need at the best cost, without introducing unnecessary coplexities.

Favourite / MUST Have tools (CLI)

NOTE: recommended way of managing must have modern utils

- native package manager on rolling releases (e.g. but not limited to pacman + yay)

- homebrew (macOS)

- nix (Linux LTS distributions)

• • tmux (terminal multiplexer, with tpm - tmux plugin manager - my ~/.tmux.conf)
    tmuxline.vim / xpanes

  • mosh
    mobile shell

  • Bash
    promptline.vim (works for Bash, Zsh, Fish)

• • Zsh + prezto / oh-my-zsh

  • fish + oh my fish framework
    fisher package manager
    oh-my-fish/plugin-title

  • fzf (fpp, skim as alternative) command line fuzzy finder, sysz can be useful for those who are not yet familiar with systemd
    Recommended: use fd with fzf
    Ctrl+r / Ctrl+t / Alt + c
    ... does magic ;-)

  • git / tig (the most powerful distribution version control system that manages Linux kernel)

  • htop / glances (iuseful web server mode) / bashtop / byptop / gotop (Go) / ytop (Rust) / bottom (Rust) / btop (bpytop written in C++)

  • below - cgroup v2 & PSI aware top-like resource monitoring for modern Linux
    its name  stems from the fact that many atop design & style decisions were rejected...
    record and replay historical data
    dump subcommand - script friendly

  • iotop
    iotop -aoP

  • sysstat
    sar / sadc / sadf
    iostat / pidstat / mpstat ...
    watch -n1 iostat -xyz --human 1 1

  • dstat
    dstat -cpmnrdgyi (quick system stats overview)
    dstat -p (sar -q) useful for process stats, kernel task queue

  • ctop (top like UI for container metrics)

  • procs (a modern replacement for ps written in Rust)

  • exa (a modern replacement for ls) | eza (a maintained replacement for ls based on exa)

  • netstat (net-tools) / ss (iproute2) / nethogs (`net top` tool group by process) / bandwhich (Rust) - current network utilization by process, connection and remote IP/hostname

  • dropwatch

  • OpenSSH (ssh, sshd, ssh-add, ssh-agent, ssh-copy-id, ssh-keygen, ssh-keyscan, scp, sftp) See -> Secure OpenSSH

  • manage SSH connections like a boss using storm and assh to save ass ;-)

  • sshuttle (simple VPN that works over SSH ;-)

  • OpenSSL (openssl, c_rehash)

  • GnuPG (AKA gpg) / keybase (PGP / OpenGPG for human beings) / Keys (keys.pub)
    Gpg4win is very good GUI toolchain for Windows GPG users (Kleopatra, GPA, etc.)

  • age / rage (Rust implementation)
    Simple, modern (X25519) and secure file encryption tool, UNIX-style composability, KISS.

  • rsync (the best and personal favourite file copy & sync tool) / rclone (rsync for cloud storage)

  • syncthing file sync - open source flavoured

  • croc / magic wormhole
    secure file transfer with end-to-end encryption via PAKE

  • duplicati - store securely encrypted backups on cloud and remote storage

  • Vim (editor + vim-plug  Vundle.vim to manage a couple of plugins)
    (moving to neovim + vim-plug in the future)

  • VimR - Neovim GUI for macOS

  • micro (amodern terminal-based text editor written in Go, aim to succeed nano)

  • neomutt (replacing mutt)

  • ack / ag (the_silver_searcher written in C) / sift (Go) - beyond grep / ripgrep (Rust) / ugrep

  • GNU coreutils / moreutils
    optional uutils/coreutils written in Rust

  • findutils / fd

  • cat / bat

  • mdcat / glow
    markdown rendering in terminal

  • Assorted secret Ninja weapons: grep / tr / sed (sd as alternative) / awk / cut / sort / uniq / wc / watch / cat / tac / head / tail / multitail / echo / tee / column / xargs

  • curl / wget / aria2 tcpdump / nmap / nc / mtr / traceroute / tracepath / rtorrent / netdiscover / gping (visualised ping)

  • HTTPie / xh (Rust clone)

  • the mighty pipe | (of course), pv / up / progress / peco

  • diff / diff-so-fancy / diffr / delta / diffoscope / pkgdiff

  • strace / ltrace

  • gdb

  • crash (Linux Kernel Crash Dump analysis utility)

  • symlinks (symlink maintenance utility)

  • pass (UNIX KISS password manager, Git + GnuPG style) - QtPass can be the GUI option

  • gopass (slightly more awesome and powerful standard UNIX password manager in Go)

  • jq / gron (make JSON greppable) / fx (CLI JSON viewer and processing tool)

  • yq / yh (surviving YAML)

  • htmlq (like jq but for HTML)

  • direnv (unclutter your .profile)

  • binenv (1 binary to rule them all - those pesky binaries kubectl, terraform, bottom, etc.)
    The last binary you'll ever install (manage binary tools, e.g. Go, Rust, etc.)

  • topgrade
    On top of upgrading everything!
    https://github.com/r-darwish/topgrade

  • hostctl
    manage /etc/hosts like a pro!

  • viddy  (Go)  / hwatch (Rust)
    modern watch in Go or Rust

  • tuc https://github.com/riquito/tuc
    when cut doesn't cut (e.g. negative indexes), written in Rust

  • xsv (CSV CLI toolkiet) / tv (Tidy Viewer) cross platform CLI CSV pretty printer written in Rust

  • cloc / tokei

  • xz / zstd (fast lossless compression)

  • linuxbrew (homebrew fork for Linux, maturing... replaced with nix)

  • Vagrant + VirtualBox (VBoxManage)

  • Pandoc (markdown - universal document converter)

  • img2pdf + ocrmypdf

  • PDF processing in CLI

  • Ansible (fantastic tool to boost productivity in both ad-hoc mode/tasks and playbooks)

  • Terraform (infra as code) with tfenv

  • Programming Language Version manager & toolchain installer

  • rbenv + ruby-build (Ruby)

  • goenv (Go)

  • pyenv (Python)

  • rustup (Rust)

  • Terminal Emulators: GNOME Terminal (gnome-terminal, superseded by gnome-console), Konsole, FinalTerm, xfce4-terminal,Terminus, Tilix, Terminology, iTerm2, alacritty, kitty, st, Termite}

  • Preference in order: Konsole / iTerm2 > kitty > alacritty

  • Vimium for chrome / Vimperator for Firefox

  • keyboard based navigation and control of web browsing in the spirit of Vim 

  • ncdu / duc (disk space analysis) / dust (more intuitive du in Rust) / duf (disk usage / free util in Go) / diskonaut (Terminal disk space navigator in Rust)

  • fdupes / rdfind

  • vmtouch - the virtual memory toucher, portable filesystem cache diagnostics and control tool

  • z (jump around) / jump (Go) / autojump (Go) / zoxide (rust)

  • Drop-down style terminal emulators: Guake, Yakuake, Tilda

  • GUI Editor: Visual Studio Code / Sublime Text 3

  • mitmproxy

  • File Manager / File Explorer TUI
    ranger
    vifm
    xplr (Rust)
    lf (Go)
    joshuto (Rust)

  • VPN
    PPTP (MPPE encryption is not secure, MS-CHAP v2 is weak so avoid using it athough it's easy to install and configure)
    IPsec / IKE{v1,v2} (strongSwan) - capable of delivery site to site and remote access solutions based on strongSwan.
    OpenVPN (Highly configuration, supports Perfect Forward Secrecy - Ephemeral Key Exchange, supports wide range of algorithms - OpenSSL, can bypass firewalls)
    WireGuard (in kernel since 5.6, fast, modern, secure VPN that utilizes state-of-art crypto, Linus Torvalds called it work of art)
    wg-access-server -  as WireGuard Server & device management Web UI

  • Mesh Network / Overlay network
    Tailscale - can be used as managed wireguard mesh VPN / Overlay as a service if self-hosted WireGuard is not a viable option
    nebula - scalable overlay networking tool with a focus on performance, simpilicity and security
    netmaker - A platform for creating and managing fast, secure, and dynamic virtual overlay (mesh) networks using WireGuard.

  • lego (Let's Encrypt client and ACME library written in Go)
    replacing certbot, supporting DNS-01 challenge (wildcard certificates), and ECC keys + Certificates ;-)
    support many DNS providers (including name.com -_-z)

  • MUST HAVE on mobile device: iSH (Linux emulator on iOS, emulating x86 Alpine Linux) / Termux , ServerCat, Octal / Materialistic, WireGuard

  • webtop - Linux Desktop Environment in your browser (Docker Compose style)

  • more to be added...

Terminal Emulators

Terminal / command line warrior ;-)

Currently using the following to unify colours for editor (Vim) multiplexier (tmux) and shell (Bash, Zsh, Fish)

• tmuxline.vim

• promptline.vim

See Linux Terminal Emulators page for complete list

TL;DR

Primary terminal emulators

- Konsole / gnome-terminal (Linux)

- iTerm2 (macOS)

Secondary terminal emulators

- kitty (Linux, macOS)

- alacritty (cross-platform)

- Tilix (Linux)

With GPU accelerated rendering: alacritty kitty iTerm2

Windows

Use Windows Terminal (it has evolved, really GOod)

Cygwin mintty is also an alternative.

Web Apps / SaaS

Google Workspace (AKA Google Apps / G Suite)

OneDrive / Microsoft 365

MicroSoft To-Do

HedgeDoc (realtime markdown collaboration)

Rescue Kit

Swiss Army Knife;-)

• SystemRescueCD SystemRescue (project renamed since 7.0, based on Gentoo Linux, since 6.0.0 it is Arch Linux based instead of Gentoo ;-)

• BackTrack 3/4/5 (You know what it is, right?)

• Kali Linux (Successor of BackTrack)

• GParted/Parted Magic

• CloneZilla (Open Source Norton Ghost equivalent)

  • Knoppix (Debian based)

NOTE: works best with the new bootable solution - Ventoy

Productivity Utilities

Key Management

Key management is hard.

Manage crypto keys, sigchains and user IDs.

• Keybase

  • Keys (keys.pub)

  • GnuPG / OpenPGP

  • Last thing you want to touch and manage on your own manually across machines.

App Launcher / Workflow

macOS

• • QuickSilver

  • Alfred (workflow, automation)

  • Raycast (workflow, productivity)

Linux

• • krunner (KDE)

  • GNOME Do / Kupfer / Ulauncher / Launchy

Windows

• • Executor

  • Wox

  • Launchy

Search (file and folder locator)

• • Cross-platform CLI utils

  • findutils / fd / mlocate

  • macOS

  • Spotlight, Alfred, QuickSilver

  • Linux

  • KDE Baloo (new file indexing and search framework for KDE Plasma), Nepomuk

Everything (Windows mlocate/updatedb equivalent, even better)

Locate files and folders instantly!

Web browser

Chrome / Chromium cross platform

NOTE: be aware of the fact that Chrome iis on its way to become an operating system...

Firefox (All platforms)

Firefox Extension List:

• Firefox add-ons @ Linux x86

• Firefox add-ons @ Linux x86_64

• Firefox add-ons @ Mac OS X

• Firefox add-ons @ Windows

Email Client

mutt

NeoMutt (teaching an old dog new tricks)

Thunderbird  (Cross Platform, reborn!) + Enigmail

A cross-platform Email client that works (just for Email!).

Recommended extensions (legacy Thunderbird):

• Thunderbird add-ons @ Linux x86_64

• Thunderbird add-ons @ Mac OS X

• Thunderbird add-ons @ Windows

Quip (Evernote replacement with built-in Markdown support and better collaboration features)

Apple Note

Instant Messaging / Messaging / Chat

• • Adium (Mac) Pidgin (Windows/Linux) + OTR MUST be used for Forward Secrecy (PFS)

• Keybase Chat

• Slack (work)

• Zulip / Mattermost?

• Wire / Signal / Telegram

• Delta Chat (Email based OpenPGP encrypted chat)

• WeChat (non-sensitive ONLY)

Virtual Desktop / Workspaces

Dexpot/VirtuaWin/Desktops/Virtual Desktop Manage (Win)

Workspace, virtual window manager. I can't bear with a stupid single desktop design for Windows. So I use VirtualWin and Desktops from Sysinternals. However, no need to do that on Linux or Mac. It's amazing to use hot keys to switch workspaces. Apple 'stole' Workspace from GNOME/KDE/XFCE/CDE/JDE (or other desktop environment I am not familiar with) and make it even better in Leopard.

System Activity Monitor / System Monitor / Task Manager

Linux

• conky

• KDE - System Activity (Ctrl + Esc) / Plasma System Monitor (Plasma 5.21+)

• Stacer (Linux system optimizer and monitor)

  • GNOME system-monitor

macOS

• • stats (macOS system monitor in menu bar)
    https://github.com/exelban/stats

  • XRG (conky-like)

  • iStat Menus (menu bar)

  • Sensei (next-gen Mac performance / monitoring tool)

Windows

• • Process Explorer

Clipboard Manager

macOS

• Clipy

• maccy (based on clipy but more user friendly, with fuzzy search, but no snippet)

• flycut

Linux

• • xsel / xclip

  • Parcellite (GTK+)

  • Klipper (KDE)

  • copyq (Qt)

Windows

• Ditto (freeware)

• copyq (Qt)

Window Management / Productivity

• macOS

  • Spectacle / Rectangle

• Linux

• KDE / KWin , Compiz Fusion

  • Windows (built-in?)

• ...

Package Manager

Linux

• pacman / yay

• rpm / yum / dnf / zypper

• dpkg / apt

• nix

• apk

macOS

• • homebrew (yes!)

  • nix

Windows

• • Chocolatey (GUI applications)

  • scoop

  • winget

UNIX-Like like environment for Windows, has 90% of the GNU CLI goodies commonly used on UNIX/Linux. For people who are addicted to Linux command line interface ;-D

Gow - GNU on Windows (Windows) in cmd.exe

GUI Application (Desktop Application) packaging and distribution

• • AppImage / AppImageHub

  • Portable, Linux distro agnostic distribution format,  self-mounting disk image that contains an application and all its dependencies, without the need of superuser permission to install.

  • Package once, run everywhere.

  • Self-update mechnism leveraging incremental diff update (not all though).

  • Ideal for desktop (GUI) app distribution and management.

  • With AppImageLauncher it's so easy to build a simple and nice workflow focusing on drag & drop, double click.

• Flatpak

  • Snap(snapcraft)

File Sync

Moving to more self-hosted backup and sync solutions.

NOTE: Moving to a rsync + cron + syncthing + EFS / EBS (ecryptfs) based backup solution to replace Dropbox.

Generic Purpose (non-sensitive data)

Dropbox (cross platform) My referral link (both of us will get 250MB extra space) with Maestral client (open source for Linux and macOS without device limitation)

Cross platform file synchronization tool, one place for everything if you have too many computers and synchronizing files become a headache. Free 2GB+ space, get all your files stored and synced in the cloud. Give it a shot!

Keybase filesystem (kbfs)

The Keybase filesystem (KBFS) is a distributed filesystem with end-to-end encryption and a global namespace. The KBFS code is open source.

BitTorrent Sync / Resilio Sync (cross platform)

Cross platform file sync via P2P, fast!

Syncthing (cross platform)

Open source, trustworthy and decentralized Sync!

Duplicati (backup to network attached or cloud Storage)

Open source backup client that securely stores encrypted, incremental, compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers.

Backup Tools / Solutions

Best general purpose backup workflows

• • rsync + cron jobs + syncthing
    to remote block or object storage (e.g. NFS, Amazon EFS, or EBS with encrypted filesystem on top with built-in HA, tarsnap, backblaze, rsync.net, wasabi, etc.)

  • shell script + cron job to detect network change (e.g. back home - dig pi.hole) or check if search path / domain is home.lan to deterimine ;-)

  • cron job / crontab for scheduled backup to home NAS (OpenZFS on Fedora) via OpenSSH (rsync style)
    OPTIONAL: syncthing to copy/sync to cloud storage weekly as cold backup(s)

  • duplicati as backup/restore solution to Google Drive / OneDrive
    Incremental backup and retention policy
    deduplication
    strong encryption (AES-256 or external GnuPG)

• cron jobs + rclone to Google Drive (Unlimited storage) and/or OneDrive

  • Pretty simple backup workflow which works well (best with unlimited storage), when data encrypiton is NOT a concern.

• macOS

• iBackup/Silverkeeper/SuperDuper!/CCC

• Time Machine

• Mozy

• Windows

• Syncback (Freeware)

• Linux

• Back in Time

• rsync (GUI - grsync/gadmin-rsync)

• rclone (rsync for cloud storage)

Infrastructure level (low level backup solutions)

DRBD - as the back bone backing the network attached storage (NFS/SMB) for self-hosted servers.

Alternative complete backup solutions

• • duplicati (cross platform backup solutions)

  • restic

  • Borg Backup

  • rclone (rsync style CLI for cloud storage)

Online Backup Solutions / Cloud Storage

• • Tarsnap

  • Online backup for the truly paranoid

  • Encryption, deduplication, open source

  • rsync.net

  • ZFS backed, rsync friendly

  • backblaze

  • wasabi

Desktop Virtualization 

• VMware Workstation (Linux/Windows)

• VMware Fusion (macOS)

• VirtualBox
  works the best with routine workflow using Vagrant, minikube, minishift, etc.

• VMware Server Freeware (Linux/Windows)

• DinD (Docker in Docker)

• K8s in Docker - kind

Bastion

Remote Access Bastion

• • Jumpserver

  • Open source 4A SSH Bastion (also supports VNC, RDP and telnet), with MFA support. Elegant Web UI focusing on user experience and ease of use + CLI.

  • Python + Django

  • Teleport

SSH Server

• Linux /  macOS

• OpenSSH

• Windows

• OpenSSH for Windows

• OpenSSH in Cygwin

  • CopSSH / Bitvise SSH Server

  • OpenSSH via WSL2?

How to encrypt your network communications via SSH Tunnel?

SSH Client:  Simply OpenSSH ;-)

secretive for macOS: https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive store SSH keys in secure enclave

How to jump over the GFW fence?

Please check the article here: SSH Tunnel

Terminal multiplexer - tmux (best of best, ditch screen;-)

Battery maintenance

• coconutBaterry (macOS)

• AlDente (macOS)
  All-in-one charging manager, limit charging percentage.

Fonts

Fonts for Terminal Emulators (mono / fixed width) cross platform (kitty, alacritty, Konsole, iTerm2)

• DejaVu

• DejaVu Fonts

• Sarasa Gothic

  • a CJK programming font based on Iosevka and Source Han Sans 

  • https://github.com/be5invis/Sarasa-Gothic

• Iosevka

  • Slender typeface for code, from code

  • https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka

iTerm2 - Menlo (macOS)

Input Methods 

Chinese Simplified, and CJK ;-)

Linux

• • fcitx / fcitx-sunpinyin / fcitx-googlepinyin / fcitx-rime

  • iBus + ibus-pinyin + ibus-sunpinyin2 / ibus-rime

• scim / scim-sunpinyin

macOS

• rime / squirrel

  • SunPinyin for macOS 2.0

• IMKQIM/QIM (shareware) FIT (freeware)

Windows

• Google Pinyin IME

• weasel (rime)

Mesh Netwok / Overlay Network

• Nebula
  Open source global overlay network focusing on simplicity, security, performance and scalability.

WireGuard or Tailscale (as a Service)

• • WireHub

  • wg-access-server

  • Tailscale

  • Netmaker

  • ZeroTier

  • Hamachi (LogMeIn)

  • FreeLAN

  • SoftEther

Remote Control

• • x11vnc / TigerVNC (via overlay network)

  • X11 forwarding via overlaynetwork (slow but encrypted via OpenSSH, requires X Server on client machines...)

  • Teamviewer

  • Steam Link

Hardware detection

- cpu-x (current CPU-Z equivalent)

- i-nex (hardware overview)

- cpu-g (cpu-z equivalent)

- mhwd (Manjaro specific - Manjaro Hardware Detection)

- gpu-viewer (a front-end to glxinfo vulkaninfo clinfo es2_info) https://github.com/arunsivaramanneo/GPU-Viewer

Bootable USB Creator / OS Image Flasher

• • dd / pv (best if you know them)

  • UNetBootin

• • Universal USB Installer

  • Rufus (bootable USB drives the easy way)

  • Etcher (flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives, AppImage available)

Find duplicate files / photos

- fdupes

- rdfind

- findimagedupes

- fddf https://github.com/birkenfeld/fddf

- fslint (GUI)

- dupeGuru (Qt5 based GUI)

- Geeqie

- DigiKam

Secure File Transfer

With end-to-end encryption

• magic wormhole

• croc

• keybase filesystem

• keys (keys.pub)

• leverages wormhole

• more generic firefox send / ffsend

• ipfs

• Bitwarden Send

Screencast keystrokes

Linux

• key-mon

• screenkey

macOS

• keycastr

PDF Processing

• img2pdf

  • lossless image to PDF, small, fast ;-)

• ocrmypdf

  • add a text layer to scanned PDF to make it searchable, optimize (reduce size), batch processing

  • high performance (leverage multiple cores of the CPU)

  • battle tested with millions of PDF (batch processing)

Container Workflow

Docker CE (Dockerfile, Docker Compose for multi container orchestration on single host)

containerd (dockershim deprecation since k8s v1.20)

• ctr / crictl

• nerdctl

• cni plugin

• moby buildkit

Podman (daemonless container runtime engine, drop-in replacement for Docker CE since 3.0.0, where Docker Compose support via podman-compose is finally working seamlessly).

podman also supports generating YAML (for k8s) and systemd units from container or pod, which makes the dev to production migration workflow from single host to k8s / OpenShift easy and flexible.

Buildah (build container images like a pro)

Skopeo (manage container image registries like a pro, working with remote image registries)

kompose

Conversion tool for Docker Compose, ideal for migrating workloads to container orchestrators like k8s or okd/OpenShift.

E-Book Management

Calibre

Cross-platform ebook manager. Manage ebook collection, backup library, convert between formats with device specific optimisations. With powerful CLI utilities to enable autoamtion and processing at scale (e.g. ebook-convert).

Home Improvement

• • Sweet Home 3D

  • Room Planner - 3D Interior Design App

Open Source interior design

• • SmartDraw

  • Landscaping

  • Chief Architect (commercial proprietary software)

  • Complete set to design, architect and build your dream house $HOME

  • 
    

Misc

• • X Server for Windows

  • Xming X Server

  • VcXsrv Windows X Server

  • Misc below the line (to be cleaned up)

  • ---------------------------------------------------

  • Windows Live Folder Share (Windows)

  • Remote file sharing and access, works like .mac (MobileMe).

  • Windows Live Writer (Windows) MacJournal (Mac OS X, paid apps)

  • Blogging client, the best ever blog client tool I have ever seen. I can't believe it is from Microsoft Windows live team, and it's FREE. Remember to download a copy of Windows Live Writer backup to backup settings, drafts and entries if you don't want to do it manually like me. It's free, I still believe that Microsoft can deliver good stuff as long as they want.

  • Windows Live Mail (Windows)

  • Wonderful mail client from Windows Live pack. Perfect support for hotmail/live/msn account. Try this if you don't like Gmail and Thunderbird

  • Media Player

  • mpv (macOS)mplayer, mplayer2 and ffmpeg powered GUI and CLI

  • IINA (macOS)

  • SMPlayer (Linux / Windows)QT front-end for mplayer

  • VLC (macOS / Windows / Linux)

  • Kmplayer (Windows only, listed in the hall of shame by ffmpeg)

  • mplayer (Linux)

  • mplayer OS X extended (macOS)

  • Movist (Mac)

  • SPlayerX (macOS/Windows)

  • MPlayerX (macOS)

Screenshot

• • Linux
    scrot (CLI)
    Shutter (formerly Gscrot)
    HotShots (KDE)

  • macOS
    built-in (cmd+shift+3, cmd+shift+4, cmd+shift+4+space = window)
    Snipaste

  • Windows
    PicPick
    Share X

VeraCrypt TrueCrypt (Cross platform)

Cross platform open source Encryption tool to secure all your important data, flexible (create a file encryption container and put your files in ;-). Strongly recommend for daily use, big brother is watching you.

pass (the standard unix password manager) / QtPass (cross-platform Qt frontend for pass)

Password manager the git + gnupg way.

Password Manager

Self-hosted and cloud solutions

cross-platform client GUI

• • Keepass (Windows)

  • keepassx (Mac/Linux)

  • KeePassXC (cross platform keepassx fork which supports YubiKey)

• lesspass stateless open source password manager https://github.com/lesspass/lesspass

Hosted Password Management

• LastPass (for work, enterprise subscription) with YubiKey support

  • Bitwarden (opensource, can be self-hosted) for personal / family password management

Keep your passwords safe in KeePass. *NIX OS please use KeepassXC.

FTP / SFTP Client

• Filezilla (FTP + SFTP) (Mac/Linux/Windows)

• Cool open source project, rated as best FTP client on Lifehacker. And now it's cross platform, which is fantastic. What's more, it supports SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), perfect equivalent for WinSCP under all OS.

• Cyberduck (Mac)

• Free FTP Client on Mac. The icon is cute and my wife likes it. Also supports SCP.

• Flow (Mac shareware)

• FlashFXP (Windows)

• I paid for this shareware because I have been using it since 2000. It's life time upgrade and support. The author is a good guy. FlashFXP is the best FTP client I have ever seen on Windows. And I keep all my site info there. There is a tool to convert site files between FlashFXP/Filezilla/CyberDuck. FlashFXP supports Site To Site FXP.

• WinSCP (Windows)

• SCP client for windows only. Probably the best choice if you run Windows and transfer files to a *NIX host via SCP/SFTP. Of course you can run in WINE, but not sure if it works 100%.

Sysinternals suite (Windows)

Powerful tools for Windows users.

Dictionary (for learning foreign languages)

• • GoldenDict (cross platform)

  • Eudic (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android)

NOTE: both support Mdict and many other formats.

Office Suite

OpenOffice.org (Windows/Linux) LibreOffice (Mac)

Free Office Suite, cross platform. Kick the shit out of Microsoft Office.

iWork

It's commercial software, normally bundled with your Mac. But I think most of the users are willing to pay for it. Most of the time.

Skype (Mac/Linux/Windows/iPhone)

Most popular VOIP client on any OS. Chat with your buddies with AES encryption and free PC to PC call, as well as cheap PC to phone international calls.

Note: Skype for iPhone works over 3G/GPRS once you jailbreak and install VoIPover3g package.

CDBurnerXP (Windows) ImgBurn (Windows)

Embrace freeware, abandon chunky Nero.

K3b (KDE Burn Baby Burn)

Famous CD/DVD burning software for Linux, KDE. Can be used under any DE/WM, as long as you installed the dependencies.

HFS (HTTP File Sever) (Windows) Runnable via WINE on Linux. Python built-in SimpleHTTPServer;-)

Woof (UNIX/Linux) Simply exchange file with this Python script.

SIP Client

X-Lite (Mac/Linux/Windows)

XAMPP (all platform)

Portable Apache httpd, MySQL, PHP, Perl combo, easy to install and uninstall. Available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, bingo for testing, debugging and troubleshooting!

P2P

Transmission (Mac/Linux) with WEB UI

rtorrent (Linux/Mac/Windows - Cygwin)

μTorrent (Windows/Mac)

aMule (Mac/Linux) with WEB UI

emule (Windows)

mldonkey (Linux/Mac)

Media Center

Kodi (AKA XBMC) / OpenELEC / LibreELEC (Raspberry Pi)

Photo / Graphics processing

GIMP (Linux/Mac)

Paint.NET (Windows)

PicPick (Windows)

QQ (Mac/Linux/iPhone/PalmOS) TM2009 (Windows)

Sometimes file transfer and remote assistance via QQ/TM is perfect. MSN sucks!!! I also like the file sharing/hosting in QQ mail, 1G per file and you can keep it as long as you like. I have to say, it's good! Tencent is getting bigger and more internationalized.

As we all know, QQ is not a safe IM tool to use. So avoid using it whenever possible.

Note: Skype and Messenger for Mac does not understand the proxy script PAC/DAT file. For Skype we have to specify the http proxy manually in system prefs. Messenger for Mac just doesn't work behind a proxy, idiot! SHIT!  Messenger for Mac 7.0.2 fixed the proxy bug.

More useful links: Links