I'm on the hunt for some under-the-radar software that system administrators find incredibly reliable or have sworn by, regardless of the operating system—MacOS, Windows, or Linux. I also appreciate links to smaller developers who provide utilities for sysadmins, such as their blogs, websites, or GitHub repos. Some of the greatest blogs I've followed have been written by small teams or solo developers sharing their experiences, challenges, and design choices in their coding journey, reminiscent of the behind-the-scenes tales from 90's and early 2000's video game studios. Just to clarify, when I say 'lesser-known,' I mean tools outside of the usual mainstream options like Sysinternals. So, what hidden gems do you all recommend?
5 Answers
You should try SecureCRT. It's a solid tool that a lot of sysadmins respect.
Check out Fences! It’s not a hardcore sysadmin tool, but it's a lifesaver for keeping shared desktops organized, especially for kiosks that get a lot of use.
Everything by Voidtools is fantastic! Their tools can really amp up productivity for sysadmins.
If you’re not using `restic` for backups yet, I really recommend it! It’s a great way to avoid potential data loss. Also, `direnv` really saves you from the headache of managing environment variables manually.
Propertree is great for editing plist files with a GUI on Windows, especially if you’re managing Jamf from a Windows setup.
I just started testing this on my workstations, and it's exactly what I need to enhance my work-life balance for the next couple of years.