The worldwide phenomenon that is Uber needs no introduction. Uber is an immensely popular ride sharing, ride hailing, company that is valued in billions. Uber is so disruptive and controversial that many cities and even countries are putting up barriers to protect the interests of local taxi drivers.

Enough about Uber as a company. To those among you who regularly use Uber app for booking a cab, Uber CLI could be a useful companion.

Uber CLI can be a great tool for the easily distracted. This unique command line application allows you to look up Uber cab's time and price estimates without ever taking your eyes off the laptop screen.

Install Uber-CLI using NPM

You need to have NPM first to install Uber-CLI on Ubuntu. npm, short for Node.js package manager, is a package manager for the JavaScript programming language. It is the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js. npm has a command line based client and its own repository of packages.

This is how to install npm on Ubuntu 19.04, and Ubuntu 18.10. And thereafter, using npm, install Uber-CLI. Fire up the Terminal and run the following.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nodejs npm
npm install uber-cli -g

And you're done. Uber CLI is a command line based application, here are a few examples of how it works in Terminal. Also, since Uber is not available where I live, I couldn't vouch for its accuracy.

Uber-CLI has just two use cases.

uber time 'pickup address here'
uber price -s 'start address' -e 'end address'

Easy right? I did some testing with places and addresses I'm familiar with, where Uber cabs are fairly common. And I found the results to be fairly accurate. Do test and leave feedback. Uber CLI github page for more info.

We've featured cool-retro-term before. It is a wonderful little terminal emulator app on Ubuntu (and Linux) that adorns this cool retro look of the old CRT displays.

Let the pictures speak for themselves.

Pretty cool right? Not only does it look cool, it functions just like a normal Terminal app. You don't lose out on any features normally associated with a regular Terminal emulator. cool-retro-term comes with a bunch of themes and customisations that takes its retro cool appeal a few notches higher.

Enough now, let's find out how you install this retro looking Terminal emulator on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 18.10. Fire up your Terminal app, and run these commands one after the other.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vantuz/cool-retro-term
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cool-retro-term

Done. The above PPA supports Ubuntu Artful, Bionic and Cosmic releases (Ubuntu 17.10, 18.04 LTS, 18.10). cool-retro-term is now installed and ready to go.


Since I don't have Artful or Bionic installations in any of my computers, I couldn't test the PPA on those releases. Do let me know if you faced any issues while installing the app.

And as some of you might have noticed, I'm running cool-retro-term from an AppImage. This is because I'm on Ubuntu 19.04 "disco dingo", and obviously the app doesn't support an unreleased OS (well, duh!).

This is how it looks on fullscreen mode. If you are a non-Ubuntu user, you can find various download options here. If you are on Fedora or distros based on it, cool-retro-term is available in the official repositories.

Taskwarrior is a simple, straight-forward command-line based TODO app for Ubuntu/Linux. This open-source app has to be one of the easiest of all CLI based apps I've ever used. Taskwarrior helps you better organize yourself, and without installing bulky new apps which sometimes defeats the whole purpose of TODO apps.

Taskwarrior: A Simple CLI based TODO App That gets the Job Done!

Taskwarrior is an open-source and cross-platform, command-line based TODO app, which lets you manage your to-do lists right from the Terminal. The app lets you add tasks, shows you the list, and removes tasks from that list with much ease. And what's more, it's available within your default repositories, no need to fiddle with PPAs. In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and similar, do the following in Terminal to install Taskwarrior. 

sudo apt-get install task

A simple use case can be as follows:

$ task add Read a book
Created task 1.
$ task add priority:H Pay the bills
Created task 2.

This is the same example I used in the screenshot above. Yes, you can set priority levels (H, L or M) as shown. And then you can use 'task' or 'task next' commands to see your newly-created todo list. For example:

$ task next

ID Age P Description                      Urg
-- --- - -------------------------------- ----
 2 10s H Pay the bills                     6
 1 20s   Read a book                       0

And once its completed, you can use 'task 1 done' or 'task 2 done' commands to clear the lists. A more comprehensive list of commands, use-cases can be found here. Also, Taskwarrior is cross-platform, which means you'll find a version that fits your needs no matter what. There's even an Android version if you want one. Enjoy!

Remember cool-old-term? The gorgeous Terminal Emulator has a name change and is now called cool-retro-term. And I think 'retro' fits the description better, a welcome change. More importantly, cool-retro-term now comes in a nicely packaged Ubuntu PPA making the whole installation process a breeze.

Install cool-retro-term in Ubuntu (PPA available for 15.10, 14.04 LTS)

Remember all the hoops you had to jump through just to install cool-retro-term (previously called cool-old-term) in your Ubuntu? Well, that's all history now. The new releases of cool-retro-term Terminal Emulator comes with its own Ubuntu repositories with support for Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and limited support for Ubuntu 15.04.

For those who didn't read our one year old post about cool-retro-term Terminal Emulator, here are a few things you should know. cool-retro-term is a Terminal Emulator that mimics the look and feel of old-school CRT monitors. First released more than a year and a half ago, cool-retro-term had gone through several iterations and is now ever more stable and lightweight. Highlight though is the availability of new stable releases via PPA for Ubuntu based distros. Here's how you install cool-retro-term in Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily) and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bugs-launchpad-net-falkensweb/cool-retro-term
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cool-retro-term

The above steps should work with Ubuntu 14.10 (Utopic) and Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid) as well. If you like the project and wish to contribute, head over to Swordfish Labs. Thanks for reading.

Rainbowstream is a fun little terminal based Twitter client for Ubuntu. It is similar to Twidge in so many ways and has every capability you expect from a basic Twitter client. 

We've seen Terminal Emulators of all sizes and shapes for Linux, but nothing like this yet. 'cool-old-term' is one gorgeous looking Terminal emulator. 

The google-translate-cli is a very simple 100-line AWK program that lets you use Google Translate without a web browser, and right from your Terminal. And it is as simple as it sounds. All you need is the GNU implementation of AWK programming language called Gawk and Git. Here's how you setup Google Translate for your Terminal in Ubuntu. 

Music on Console aka MOC is perhaps the most lightweight and easy-to-install music player for Linux I have ever tested. And don't be intimidated by the fact that MOC is a console only player. Once you spend enough time with MOC, it becomes as easy to use as any other alternative music players for Linux. Moreover, if you're a fan of MPD plus NCMPC combination who doesn't like to jump through hoops just for installing and setting it up, MOC might be the alternative you have been looking for. It's right there in Ubuntu repositories by default. 

Speedtest.net is a pretty good place to check your internet speeds. But there is an even simpler way. Using the speedtest-cli command line app, you can actually check your current broadband speeds via Terminal. So here's how you do it. 

Got a mail recently from freeworld's Raphael where he introduced me to his recent creation - a Linux bash shell cheat sheet meant for beginners. Very useful list of commands and keyboard shortcuts for Terminal with descriptions, more relevant if you are an avid Ubuntu/Debian user.

We have featured a few Terminal emulators before and introduced you to applications like CLI Companion that makes you more familiar with command line in Linux. Now, we want to take it to a whole new level. A collection of really good Terminal emulator apps for Linux.

TermKit by Steven Wittens is a refreshingly beautiful graphic replacement for terminal. If you are wondering, TermKit is not a flashy GUI for Terminal, instead its very much a command line based system made on top of WebKit, the rendering engine used in web browsers like Google Chrome and Chromium. TermKit has been originally designed for Mac OSX, but there is a TermKit fork by Floby which you can install and experience in Ubuntu right now! Read on.

Bleeding Edge is a simple script for Ubuntu that lets you install a multitude of applications not available in official Ubuntu repositories. Using Bleeding Edge, you don't need to manually add repositories and update PPAs to install a new application, instead you just need to select the applications you want to install and click OK, simple as that. 

We have featured several terminal related hacks before, but this one is different. This one is dedicated to all Star War fans out there.

There is literally no dearth for music player applications in Ubuntu. Banshee, which is the new default music player for Ubuntu 11.04, is among the best you can get. Alternatives include Clementine, Rhythmbox, Amarok, DeadBeef among others. But MPD(Music Player Daemon) and NCMPC(an MPD client) combination opens up a whole new genre of music players for Ubuntu power users. Folks who like tools like Twidge Twitter Client are gonna adore this.

CLI Companion is a really useful tool especially if you are a complete newcomer to Linux and Ubuntu and totally unaware of ways to understand command line. Ironically, CLI Companion lets you learn and enjoy command line using its simple GUI.

If you like playing around with your Terminal, you will love this cute little program that can create a small Matrix style animation in your Terminal.

Here is yet another small hack that a lot of you might find really useful. This hack adds a useful 'Open in Terminal' option in the right click menu in GNOME/Nautilus.

For non gamers(like me), Quake is a first person shooter game and design inspiration for Guake Terminal Emulator came from consoles in computer games such as Quake which slide down from the top of the screen when a key is pressed, and slide back up when the key is pressed again. Guake is originally inspired from KDE's Yakuake.

Evilwm folks, you will love it. A twitter desktop client that is completely controlled from Terminal. Twidge is a command line twitter desktop client for Linux. It's feature rich and obviously easy to use.