Do you want more ways to put your Linux PC to good use? Or alternative ways to do something you’ve already been doing? There’s a lot of good, free software for Linux if you know where to look.
I’ve been scanning Linux discussions and repositories for open source apps, and I found a few this week that seem like they might be worth someone’s time. I couldn’t think of a theme to tie these together, but I do think they all provide you with a way to do something you probably already do, but maybe better.
Kmouth: Easy text to speech
The holidays are here in the US, and I’m recalling conversations I’ve had with family members I’m visiting who struggled to speak. After discovering Kmouth, I realized it could be a useful application for those interactions.
Kmouth is a text-to-speech accessibility tool that lets you type words and quickly have your Linux computer speak the text out loud. It also has phrasebooks for common phrases built-in, along with the ability to create and save personal phrasebooks. These are handy when there are sayings the speaker uses a lot and doesn’t want to repeatedly retype.
You can find Kmouth in most software browsers for Linux, or through the terminal using one of these commands:
sudo apt install kmouth #Debian and Ubuntu
sudo dnf install kmouth #Fedora
sudo pacman -S kmouth #Arch
sudo zypper install kmouth #openSUSEKeep in mind that Kmouth is just a frontend for speech synthesis. You need to have a speech dameon like speechd installed and operating. Packages like the espeak command can supply the speech synthesis engine.
That said, TTS on its own can sound very robotic, as you’ll probably find out the first time you try Kmouth. I installed Pied and used it to download more natural-sounding voice models for speechd. After that, Kmouth’s output was way better.
Popsicle: Multi-drive image writing
I make bootable USB drives a lot, and I’m always interested in trying out new flashing tools. Popsicle was made by System76 for the Pop_OS! desktop. It’s written in memory-safe Rust, and what makes it extra special in my eyes is its multi-USB function. It can write a single image file to multiple USB drives at once. It automatically detects all attatched USB drives and, while most image writers make you choose one, Popsicle lets you check the box for each one you want flashed.
To be honest, I never personally need more than one USB drive with the same image written to them at a time. However, if you were perhaps making bootable Linux drives for your friends, then I can see Popsicle’s abilities coming in handy. I’m confident someone out there will find a use-case.
While Popsicle isn’t widely available in Linux repositories, you can find it as a distro-agnostic AppImage by visiting Popsicle’s GitHub release page. If you’re skilled, you can also build the application from source there.
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Superfile: Gorgeous terminal-based file browsing
If you’re used to graphical file managers, but you’d like to use something more lightweight without the need to learn numerous file management commands, then Superfile is worth checking out. It’s a terminal user interface written in Go that looks beautiful while showing you everything in your directories with a high level of detail, along with useful management tools.
Back in September, I wrote about the nnn file manager for the terminal, but Superfile stands apart from nnn by way of its multi-tooled, multi-paneled interface. It has a dedicated panel for common folders like Downloads, Documents, and Music, and it also lets you keep other directories quickly accessible in the Pinned section. There’s a menu for selecting other disks, plus a preview pane, a process monitor, and a metadata viewer.
Other interesting features include its dedicated clipboard pane so you always know what’s ready to be pasted, a built-in ZIP extractor tool, plus support for Vim-like navigation. There isn’t much you’ll be missing out on if you make the switch from the likes of Nautilus to Superfile. Yet you’ll get the street-cred of working in the Linux terminal.
Superfile is available in certain public locations, like Arch’s extra repository via the sudo pacman -S superfile command. The developers provide an automated script to install it on any Linux system, though, so you don’t need to build it from source if you don’t want to.
bash -c "$(curl -sLo- Alternatively, if you want to use wget, you can run this command:
bash -c "$(wget -qO- Regardless of which method you use, keep in mind that the developers recommend you install a free Nerd Font on your operating system. That will make sure Superfile is able to display icons and other elements correctly.
Until next weekend, that’s all the Linux apps I have to show you. In case you missed it, be sure to check out last week’s round-up of cool Linux software.