Now that I have my mobile working with Crunchee to provide me with Internet access on the move I thought I should investigate some simple, less bandwidth hungry apps that I can use on the go.
Alpine:
Top of the list comes my favorite Email client
Alpine. This a a very simple, straight forward command line email client. It is IMHO easier to configure and use than its main rival
Mutt. However, if you are interested in learning more about Linux and email system, I thoroughly recommend giving Mutt a try.
If you are planning on using Pine with Gmail or Google Apps then you can follow
this guide to get it all set up.
Gcalcli:
If you are a keep Google Apps user another Cli application I would suggest is
gcalcli. Gcalcli is a Python application that lets you view your Google or Google Apps calendar from the command line. It's Google code page provides a great
How To to get you started.
Note: I had a few problems getting this to work but finally found
this solution.
Irssi:
Irssi is a great, customisable and expandable
IRC client. That said I almost never use it for IRC. One of the best things about Irssi is its expandability, using this expandability I use Irssi as my Instant Messaging and Twitter client. Installing
Bitlbee gives me access to all my IM accounts and using the script provided by
Twirssi I have a fully functional Twitter client right inside Irssi.
Note: In an upcoming post I will detail how I use Irssi, Bitlbee and Twirssi to access all my IM account and Twitter from within Irssi.
Cmus:
Cmus is a simple command line music player. It is one of the simplest and easiest to use I have found.
elinks:
elinks is a fully featured command line web browser. I think most people would be surprised how easy and refreshing it is to brows the web via the command line, if for nothing else than the complete lack of advertising! Though I always have
Firefox on hand in case!
With the tools listed above you should be able to get almost anything you need to do online done via the command line. The added benefit of this is that it dramatically reduces your data usage which is great if like me you have a measly data allowance on your mobile contract!
Lastly, there are a couple of other great command line apps that I use daily.
MC:
MC or
Midnight Commander is a command line file manager with a great many features include the ability to view the contents of RPM package and other common archive formats as if they were simply another directory, and to function as an FTP client.
Vim:
, a command line text editor, includes features such as syntax highlighting. Though Vim is often seen as a tool for programmers, it can be useful as a generic text editor, it even has a plugin for
Blogger!
Gnu Screen:
Of all the tools described so far I think the most useful, certainly the most used, is
Gnu Screen. It is quite difficult to describe what Screen is, other than it provides an environment in the command line that allows you to run all the above applications and switch easily between them. In addition you can disconnect from your session, leaving all your programs running, and reconnect latter, picking up just where you left off. If you intend to use the command line a lot I thoroughly recommend looking into Gnu Screen.
My .rc or config files for each of these programs are available
here if you want something to get you started.
All the software used above is freely available and can be downloaded directly from most Linux distributions repositories. Most of these are developed by individuals or teams in their spare time for the benefit of the Linux community.
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