Tool I use
Desktop environment or window managers
I primarily use Wayland.
- Generally, I use GNOME because I love its simplicity and design.
- Casually, you may see my driving Sway or Hyprland; wlroots is a cool project.
Text editors
- I use neovim for quick editing in terminal,
- but I use VS Codium for projects spanning multiple files and actually coding something. I used to use VS Code earlier.
- I sometimes also use Xed, that is a part of Linux Mint's XApps, for quickly writing something or when I have to move around and copy something (I still don't know how to move stuff and copy in neovim or vim). Though I would mostly use GNOME apps, but I prefer Xed over Gnome Text Editor because I believe having a toolbar in Xed is good, and Xed also supports a tree sidebar for showing files.
Music Players
- I download music (by very legal ways) and maintain playlists using .m3u files. I use mpd and ncmpcppcpcppcppcpp on my laptop. I sync these music files and playlists between my phone and laptop by either using Syncthing, or using MEGA cloud storage.
I use something called "GoneMAD music player" on my phone, because it has got support for non-databased .m3u playlists and support for id3v2.4 tags with correct support for multiple 'ARTIST' fields.
I scrobble my music to last.fm, libre.fm and listenbrainz.org.
I also use Spotify for discovering music (by going to some song that I know, and then clicking 'Go to Song Radio'). I used to use Spotify Premium, with thierd party clients based on librespot, but I stopped using it, following the switch to offline music management.
I also use Amberol for random music files. Emanuel Bassi and others have done great work on it.
Archive manager
- Generally Nautilus (GNOME Files) just works fine with normal archives.
- File Roller (generic name: Archive Manager) when using GUI, for complext archives and others not supported by Nautilus.
- unar in terminal because this can extract a lot of file types without learning separate commands for unzip, tar, etc.
Notes
I prefer to just use markdown for notes, but I also do want the sync functionality. I use:
I sync their write directories either through Syncthing or MEGA cloud storage, and they work beautifully.
Video player
Imagine not using MPV
Screen Recording
Document Reader
Evince (generic name: Document Viewer)
Fediverse
I currently only use Mastodon primarily, though I also have a pixelfed accounts. The clients I use are:
Browser
I have a bug in my mind which keeps asking me to switch back and forth between Firefox and Chrome/Chromium. I am  currently using Firefox on mobile, and Chromium on laptop. Three months ago, I used to use Firefox on desktop, and  6 months, I used to use Chromium both on laptop and mobile.
Office tools
Why would a programer even need them? So I don't even keep LibreOffice. When there is an absolute need to use a Office suite, I would just use Google Docs, and I also have Abiword and Gnumeric installed.
Torrent client
I used to use QBitTorrent, and it worked great. But, now I use Deluge just because of my affection for GTK.
RSS and Atom Feeds
I use the miniflux instance at https://tildevarsh.in. The clients I use for it:
Image viewer
- Currently using Eye of GNOME (eog)
- but looking forward to use Loupe when it lands in GNOME Core to replace eog.
Backup software
I use Pika Backup to backup my stuff to two places: BorgBase and my pendrive. (Pika Backup is a frontend to Borg Backup)
Matrix Clients
- Nheko on Laptop
- SchildiChat on Android
Though I am looking forward to use Fractal when its development branch starts supporting spaces.
Mail client
- Geary on Laptop
- K-9 mail on Android
Other miscalleneous tools
- Decoder for scanning QR codes on Laptop (libadwaita app)
- GNOME Characters for adding emojis or unicode symbols
- Linux Mint's Warpinator on Laptop and unofficial Warpinator for Android to share files across phone and laptop when on same network
- Gtranslator for translating software UI's into Hindi
- Mousai for identifying music, right through desktop.