Prologue

I use Linux (Ubuntu LTS) as my primary operating system since 2015. Celebrating the 5th anniversary, I wish to share the list of applications (both standalone and web) I use on an everyday basis – for programming, writing, and chilling. I hope you will find some of them suitable for you to get more work done. Los!

Internet

  • Firefox – my default web-browser. Security, extensions, customization capabilities are the reasons to name it the must have.
  • Chrome – some applications (usually developed by government authorities) are still optimized directly for Chrome. It is nice to have Chrome at hand for these (rare) cases.

Mails

  • Geary – for my personal email addresses, I always use corresponding native web-services (Gmail, Yandex), all work-related emails go to Geary. Minimalism and great shortcuts rule.

GTD

  • TickTick – to-do list manager. Fast, multiplatform, and customizable.
  • Notion – a perfect tool to store all the stuff together in one place.
  • Google Keep – inbox for notes, which then go to the TickTick or Notion (or don’t).

Messengers

  • Telegram – one love for messaging.
  • Slack – work-related chats.

Writing

  • Google Docs – paper drafts, reviews, official documents.
  • Overleaf – powerful latex editor in your browser. The must for paper writing.
  • Notion – notes, lists, thoughts.
  • VS Code – for writing in the plain text of markdown. This post has been written in VS Code.
  • gedit – lightweight text editor. A great alternative to VS Code on old machines (e.g., for my 6 y.o. laptop).
  • LibreOffice – ugly, full of bugs, but sometimes useful for opening .docx.

Programming

  • Anaconda – managing programming environments for Python.
  • Jupyter Notebook – interactive IDE for Python (other languages are also supported). Runs in your browser.
  • VS code – I use the VS Code when I need to write Python scripts or develop libraries. Many extensions for VS Code have been developed to make software development easier – linter, auto-completion, indentation, ssh-tunnelling, to name a few.
  • tmux – life-saving application to manage multiple terminals.
  • screen – when tmux is unavailable on a remote host.
  • nano – text editor that works in every terminal.
  • Google Colab – interactive cloud IDE for prototyping workflows that require GPU for feasible computation (e.g., deep neural networks).
  • vast.ai – service for renting remote hosts with GPU enabled.

References

  • Zotero – saves all academic papers in one place. Useful tips and tricks on customization.
  • Mendeley – I migrated from Mendeley to Zotero because of two reasons: (1) Elsevier is an evil; (2) Mendeley extensions didn’t work correctly both for Firefox and Chrome. It could be an alternative if you don’t mind the reasons above.

Drawing

  • Inkscape – for drawing vector graphics.
  • KolourPaint – Paint for Linux.
  • draw.io – for drawing diagrams (e.g., research workflows).

Virtualization

  • VirtualBox – for having WindowsXP and MS Office 2003 at hand (not a joke).

Music

News

  • Feedly – RSS client that aggregates news from Habr, 5.38, and other blogs.
  • Tweetdeck – web-client for Tweeter from Tweeter.
  • Telegram – for reading channels (e.g., https://t.me/vsevstok).

Utils

  • TeamViewer – the easiest way to connect to a remote server using a graphical interface.
  • Double Commander – two-panel file manager for oldies.
  • DeepL – translator powered by deep learning. A great alternative to Google.Translator.
  • Surfshark – VPN-client.

Epilogue

I don’t have any plans to migrate from Linux back to Windows or to macOS. I am happy and satisfied with the tools I mentioned above – it is everything what I need to get my work done.