GUI

Previous post: Services.

• Development

  • Meld
  • Geekbench benchmarking
• Day-to-day

  • OBS Studio
  • LunaTask
  • Mixxx

Development

Meld

You can configure external tools in git, called ‘difftools’ that improve the default diff-viewing experience. My favourite difftool is meld. You can configure it in git as the default difftool. In ~/.gitconfig

[diff]
tool = meld

[difftool.meld]
cmd = meld "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"

To launch a window comparing the whole repository at different points in time, use something like (-d stands for directory compare):

• git difftool -d [COMMIT_LEFT]..[COMMIT_RIGHT]
• git difftool -d [OTHER_COMMIT]

I recommend going into the settings of meld to turn on syntax highlighting.

You can also add it as a git alias

[alias]
meld=!git difftool -t meld --dir-diff

Now, you can use the shortcut git meld [BRANCH] to compare the current branch with another branch graphicall (and don’t need to remember the -d flag).

Geekbench benchmarking

Link: Geekbench

When you want to make a choice between different computer systems, you may want to benchmark them against eachother. I found the (closed-source) Geekbench test suites quite easy to use. They exist for all operating systems and are packaged for most Linux distributions.

After installation, you can just run one of the geekbench commands (based on your CPU architecture). The results are uploaded to Geekbench servers and displayed in a web interface.

You can directly save results to your account, which is useful if you want to monitor for performance regressions on your machines.

Day-to-day

OBS Studio

A screen recording tool that is great for preparing conference talks.

LunaTask

An end-to-end encrypted task manager that has good support for all platforms (but is not free).

Mixxx

Excellent, open source, feature-rich music mixing software.