software tools and utilities

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Last Updated: Tuesday, 06 June 2023 22:37
Published: Monday, 16 September 2019 20:47
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software tools and packages:

Under GNU/Linux system, there are lot of software utilities and tools available. All of these are open source and are a better alternative than anything else out there. GNU site maintains these.

Link: https://www.gnu.org/software/software.html

A lot of these GNU packages were already covered under Linux cmds section. GNU packages like less, grep, tar, gzip, readline, time, etc are used so commonly, that they seem like Unix cmds. But in fact they are packages/software from GNU.

In this section, we'll cover many of these GNU packages, as well as other open source software that are not provided by GNU project. I've also included other software that are not strictly open source, but are widely used.

Tools for compiling:

  • gcc: Compiler for C
  • Make: GNU Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program's source files. 
  • Cmake: Alternative for make but not under GNU. Still a open source.

Languages:

  • sed: sed (stream editor) is a non-interactive command-line text editor. It is used to filter selected text/patterns from files. Very popular for using in scripts.
  • awk: It's replaced by gawk (GNU awk). It does similar thing as sed, and depending on pattern extraction to be done, awk may be more convenient. Use both awk and sed depending on your need.
  • bash: covered under shells. Other popular shell in csh, though csh is not under GNU.
  • R: R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. 

Other utilities:

  • emacs: Very popular editor for editing files.
  • nano: another editor to replace pine or pico which were used as editors to read/write emails in Linux/GNU
  • gimp: GNU Image manipulation pgm. Very popular editor for editing images.
  • gnuplot: Used to generate 2D/3D plots of data. Inspite it's name, it's not associated with GNU, nor has GPL license. It's open source though, and widely distributed with all GNU/Linux distro.