GParted uses libparted to detect and manipulate devices and partition tables while several (optional) filesystem tools provide support for filesystems not included in libparted.
GParted is an industrial-strength package for creating, destroying, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the filesystems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, […]

Two useful little console applications that I don’t really think about but use a fair amount are dict and cal.
dict
dict is a client for the Dictionary Server Protocol (DICT), a TCP transaction based query/response protocol that provides access to dictionary definitions from a […]

encfs - encrypted virtual filesystem
This package provides a user level encrypted filesystem. There are lots of guides and information on how to set this up, so I’ll just give a quick overview for use in debian.

First install the encfs package.
Next load the fuse kernel module. If your running a stock debian kernel it should be […]

ddrescue - copies data from one file or block device to another
dd_rescue is a tool to help you to save data from crashed partition. It tries to read and if it fails, it will go on with the next sectors where tools like dd will fail. If the copying process is interrupted
by the user […]

slimserver - Streaming Audio Server
This package isn’t all that useful unless you own a squeezbox device but even if you don’t have one it might be worth looking into. The slimserver is a big perl app (which sounds kinda ugly) but it works quite well. It runs as a service on the machine you install […]

aee - An easy to use screen-based editor
I know this is setting me up for some serious flack (even from fellow linuxslut.net authors), but I can’t get use to vi. It seems like a great system once you know all the keyboard shortcuts and mastered the thing. In the last 4 or 5+ years I […]

gkrellm - The GNU Krell Monitors
With a single process, gkrellm manages multiple stacked monitors and supports applying themes to match the monitors appearance to your window manager, Gtk, or any other theme.
Has the ability to monitor a fair amount of system vitals and info, while feeding most anyones hunger for flashing lights, colorful graphs, and […]

mpd - Music Player Daemon
Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a server that allows remote access for playing audio files (Ogg-Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, Wave, and AIFF), streams (Ogg-Vorbis, MP3) and managing playlists. Gapless playback, buffered output, and crossfading support is also included. The design focus is on integrating a computer into a stereo system […]

check-gmail - CheckGmail is a system tray application that checks a Gmail account for new mail.
checkgmail is a clean easy to setup gnome applet that will check a gmail account for new mail. It has a very nice interface that will let you mouse over the icon and show you a summary of the […]

pwgen generates random, meaningless but pronounceable passwords.
pwgen can be used to generate strong passwords and is very handy if you have to come up with lots of passwords for user accounts. Typing “pwgen” will default to listing 8 colums of passwords, but you can also “pwgen -1″ to be given just one. Lots of switches […]