Do you want more ways to put your Linux PC to good use? Or other ways to do something you’ve already done? There is a lot of good free software for Linux if you know where to look.
I’ve been scouring the Linux threads and repositories for open source applications, and I found a few this week that seem worth someone’s time. I haven’t found a theme to tie them together, but I think they all give you a way to do something you probably already do, but maybe better.
Kmouth: easy speech synthesis
The holidays are here in the United States and I remember conversations I’ve had with family members I visit who have difficulty speaking. After discovering Kmouth, I realized it could be a useful app for these interactions.
Kmouth is a text-to-speech accessibility tool that lets you type words and quickly ask your Linux computer to speak the text aloud. It also contains built-in phrasebooks for common phrases, as well as the ability to create and save personal phrasebooks. These are handy when the speaker uses a lot of sayings and doesn’t want to retype them repeatedly.
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 an interface for text-to-speech. You must have voice software such as Speechd installed and working. Packages like the espeak command can power the text-to-speech engine.
That said, TTS itself can seem very robotic, as you’ll probably discover the first time you try Kmouth. I installed Pied and used it to download more natural speech models for Speechd. After that, Kmouth’s production was much better.
Popsicle: writing images to multiple drives
I make a lot of bootable USB drives and am always interested in trying new flashing tools. Popsicle was created by System76 for Pop_OS! desk. It’s written in Rust, memory-safe, and what makes it extra special to me is its multi-USB capability. It can write a single image file to multiple USB drives at once. It automatically detects all connected USB drives, and while most image editors make you choose one, Popsicle lets you check the box for each one you want to flash.
To be honest, I personally never need more than one USB drive with the same image written on it at a time. However, if you wanted to create bootable Linux drives for your friends, I can see Popsicle’s capabilities coming in handy. I’m confident someone will find a use case.
Although Popsicle is not widely available in Linux repositories, you can find it as a distribution-independent AppImage by visiting the Popsicle GitHub release page. If you are skilled, you can also build the app from source.
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Superfile: Superb terminal-based file browsing
If you’re used to graphical file managers, but want to use something lighter without needing to learn lots of file management commands, then Superfile is worth a look. It’s a terminal UI written in Go that looks beautiful while showing you everything in your directories in a high level of detail, along with useful management tools.
Back in September, I wrote about the nnn file manager for Terminal, but Superfile sets itself apart from nnn with its multi-tool, multi-panel 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 is a menu for selecting other disks, as well as a preview pane, process monitor, and metadata viewer.
Other great features include its dedicated clipboard pane so you always know what’s ready to paste, a built-in ZIP extract tool, and support for Vim-like navigation. You won’t miss much if you switch from Nautilus to Superfile. Still, you will have the credibility of working in Linux terminal.
Superfile is available in some public locations, such as Arch’s Supplementary Repository through the sudo pacman -S superfile order. The developers, however, provide an automated script to install it on any Linux system, so you don’t need to build it from source if you don’t want to.
bash -c "$(curl -sLo- https://superfile.dev/install.sh)"Alternatively, if you want to use wget, you can run this command:
bash -c "$(wget -qO- https://superfile.dev/install.sh)"Whichever method you use, keep in mind that the developers recommend that you install a free Nerd font on your operating system. This will ensure that Superfile is able to display icons and other elements correctly.
Until next weekend, these are all the Linux applications I have to show you. In case you missed it, don’t forget to check out last week’s roundup of cool Linux software.
