Whether you spend your life at the console or not, there are many tools out there that run on the command line and do their work more efficiently than there GUI counterparts.

Some general advice

Whenever you’re in doubt about some application, the first thing you should do is read it’s man page. Do that by typing in man command into a terminal. Scroll through the man page with the arrow keys and quit using q
If this doesn’t help, a quick Google search will. Just Google the name of the app along with what you’re looking for, like mplayer enable subtitles, for example.

Also note that the learning curve for these applications are slightly steeper than those of their GUI counterparts, and the returns are far greater.

Also note the instructions to quit each application. Most people new to the console won’t be aware of how to cleanly exit console programs (and some veterans don’t as well :P ). So don’t laugh at them :)

Installing the applications

All these applications will be available in most distribution repositories, which means you can install them using your distribution’s package manager (like the Ubuntu software store, or synaptic).

  1. The Midnight Commander


    Command: mc
    This is the most famous file browser there is out there. Based on the (really) old Norton Commander for DOS, this one is so powerful you’ll never want to reach for that mouse again.
    MC is a two-paned file manager, which means it’s got, er, two panes :P

    You can browse different directories with these panes, making it easier and more powerful to manage your files. (Some of the newer GUI managers can have panes too, like Dolphin).

    If you feel lost, just press F1 for help. F10 quits.
    Oh, and MC lets you use the mouse if you’re running on an XTerm, like Gnome’s Terminal :)

    MC website

  2. Music On Console (MOC)


    Command: mocp
    This is a very simple and easy music player for the console. It has a two-pane layout.
    The left pane is a file browser. Simply use the arrow keys to scroll through folders.
    Enter will start playback of the currently highlighted file.

    The right pane is the playlist. (Press tab to switch between the browser and the playlist)
    To add a file to the playlist, press a while the file is highlighted in the browser.
    To add a folder to the playlist, press A (Shift + a).
    The cool thing about MOC is that you can detach the interface and the music will continue to play.
    Closing the terminal window just disconnects MOC. (Running the mocp again will bring you back to the interface where you can control playback)

    To fully quit MOC, press Q while still connected to the interface.

    MOC has a number of themes, too. Pressing t will show you a list of themes you can choose from.

    3. MOC website

  3. Alpine


    Command: alpine
    Alpine is a rather simple to use email client (at least by console-tool standards!)
    It features a interface that allows you to use the arrow keys to select and read your emails. In fact, the most difficult part of getting it to work is setting it up with your email address, and that’s really not so difficult if spend a few minutes concentrating on it.
    You don’t even have to edit tons of configuration files, all you have to do is fill in information in the SETUP section of Alpine’s main menu.

    (incidentally, Linus Torvalds uses Alpine ;) )
    Quitting Alpine is achieved by pressing q and confirming with an Enter.
    The text at the bottom of the screen provides context-sensitive help.

    Alpine website

  4. rTorrent


    Command: rtorrent
    (torrent client)
    This has to be one of the most powerful tools in the console world. rTorrent is truly a complete torrent application. However, it takes a little getting used to before you can use it like a pro.
    rTorrent has a reasonably simple interface to start with. To start the download of a torrent, press Backspace and type in the path of the .torrent file (you can use TAB for completion).

    rTorrent is capable of all kinds of advanced manouveres. Like watching a directory for torrents. When you do that, dropping a .torrent file into a watched directory will trigger rTorrent to start downloading it at once.

    Read the usage guide here.
    Quit it using Control + q.
    rTorrent Website

  5. mplayer


    Command: mplayer
    Mplayer is the swiss army knife of media players. While many GUI versions do exist (gmplayer, kmplayer, smplayer), mplayer is essentialy a command driven application.
    To cut a long story short, Mplayer is a multimedia player that can play any media format whose libraries are installed on your computer (quite a lot, actually – you can install more libraries by searching your package manager for gstreamer and installing the appropriate packages.)

    Of course, when mplayer plays a movie, it doesn’t do it in the console – it opens a new window and plays it there. But basically, most of the stuff is done using key commands and with command line options.
    Some quick keys are:
    - The arrow keys for skipping forward and backwards
    - [ and ] for slowing down and speeding up playback, respectively
    - M for muting
    - f for fulldcreen
    - v to enable subtitles
    and many more. Consulting mplayer’s man page will give you a lot of information, including shortcuts to changing the hue, contrast and saturation of a video.

    Also, if you’re using a framebuffer console without X running, mplayer will output videos to the framebuffer device. So you really don’t need to have a GUI running to use mplayer.
    To quit mplayer, just press q
    Mplayer website

    6. Conclusion

    These are 5 tools that you just can’t live without in the console world.
    If you think there are any more great console apps to add to the list, let us know in the comments!

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