It seems like the FOSS community is continuing to grow, and FOSS apps keep getting better (Immich reallh blew my mind recently), which is a big win 😎 but there are still many apps I use that I would kill for an open source alternative. I am curious what you guys think? Are there any apps you’d love alternatives for?
Honestly I would if I could.
The reason I redo it is because I change work places… And it’s one of those things I could actually bring with me no problem because it doesn’t contain confidential data, but also since it’s so trivial, I don’t think of it until I’m on to the next place.
And I haven’t made a new one since last change 😂
What I’d probably do today is to list out the constraints and what I’d like to have work, then ask ChatGPT or Bing AI to make it for me, e.g.;
On a system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 I should like a simple ping tool. It should be written using best practices, contain a shebang, follow all good guidelines for scripting and for the tools used. It should print out a help section with example if called without arguments. If no flags are provided, it could be hostnames or an IPs. Alternative, it can accept an argument of a CIDR range following a switch, '--range 10.2.3.4/30'. When it has verified the input, the following tests should be made for the IP, hostname or IPs, per IP involved;
- If IP, PTR lookup
- if hostname(s), look up A and AAAA records
- It should try opening all the most common ports using netcat, telnet, nmap or similar
- It should pretty print a concise and user friendly report of all outcomes
The script should be error free, print out helpful error messages when something occurs and gracefully degrade using ‘try/catch’ or similar. As far as possible, it should use different functions internally to ensure modualirty and maintainability.
That would give you a Python or Bash script most likely. It’s going to give you an 80% done script. Probably also experiment with feeding it a type of output you’d prefer. Hope that helps!
I usually have some specific goals I’d like to add, which is why this would be the barebones scaffolding.
That aside, I don’t like the output from nmap 😜
I’m actually looking at doing a wrapper around NMap. Personally I’m fine with “Just use NMap” as a solution, but I need something that’s usable by people who know only a little about Linux and aren’t super comfortable in the command line. So I want to do stuff like enumerating the interfaces and just letting them pick one to scan instead of having to specify a network. I’ll probably work in a really basic UI using Dialog or something as well.
