Our brains are not meant to be locked in for eight straight hours during a work/school day. That's not how these little pink sponges work, no matter what hack productivity gurus on YouTube might try to sell you.

What works is cutting the friction around your workflow, and staying on top of the mental nerfs you already carry, plus the ones that pile up over the day. There's a whole ecosystem built around fixing that, ranging from break reminder apps, Kanban boards, to Pomodoro timers and phone-to-desktop bridges.

On GNOME, you don't need to leave your desktop to get most of this. The extension ecosystem already covers timers, notes, clipboard history, and phone syncing, without asking you to juggle five different subscriptions.

Here are eight extensions worth having, plus a native GNOME feature that handles some of this for free.

1. GSConnect

Every time your phone buzzes, and you have to pick it up just to check what it was, that's a small amount of time taken away from whatever you were doing. GSConnect gets rid of that by putting your phone's notifications right on your desktop, so you can glance, decide it's not urgent, and stay exactly where you were.

Of course, this could also go the other way, making you waste more of your time, but that's on you. ☠️

It's a full implementation of KDE Connect built specifically for GNOME Shell. Beyond notifications, you get SMS from your keyboard, a synced clipboard between your phone and your Linux machine, and file sharing that goes both directions.

2. Caffeine

Caffeine does one thing. It stops your screen from dimming, locking, or suspending while it's switched on. Click the coffee cup icon in the top bar, and GNOME leaves your screen alone until you turn it back off.

It sounds minor until you're three slides into a presentation and the screen goes black, or you're deep into a long article and the lock screen interrupts you mid paragraph. You can also scroll on the panel icon to toggle it, and there's command line support if you'd rather script it.

Alternatively, you could fully disable system suspend via the Settings menu under the Power page (inside Power Saving), but that's not a good idea if you are running a laptop that needs to be functional during long sessions without AC power.

3. ddterm

Hit a keyboard shortcut, and a terminal slides down from the top of the screen. Hit it again, and it slides back up. With ddterm, you don't need to switch through workspaces or hunt for a terminal window buried under everything else.

Restart your session and every tab comes right back, and resizing is just a matter of dragging on the outer edge. The preferences panel covers the rest if you go looking for it.

It also runs natively on Wayland, which isn't something every drop-down terminal extension can claim, and its development has stayed consistent for years now, with a steady flow of releases rather than long stretches of silence between updates.

4. Clipboard Indicator

Clipboard Indicator keeps a searchable history of everything you copy, text and images both, so you're not relying on memory or copying the same thing twice.

The feature list goes further than most clipboard managers bother with. Pin entries to keep them at the top, tag them to stay organized, search with regex if you need precision, and edit an entry directly from the menu instead of copying it out, fixing it, and copying it back in.

For anyone handling sensitive information, a private mode pauses history tracking on demand, and specific apps like password managers can be excluded from tracking entirely.

5. Advanced Alt-Tab Window Switcher

GNOME's default Alt+Tab is fine until you have a dozen windows open and no way to tell them apart at a glance.

Advanced Alt-Tab Window Switcher or AATWS replaces all three of GNOME's built-in switchers with one that actually helps you find what you're looking for. This includes filtering, sorting, and a type-to-search mode that matches by title, app name, or even the executable behind it.

It's not limited to switching either. Close windows, move them between workspaces or monitors, pin one always on top, or launch a new instance of an app, all without leaving the switcher.

For anyone whose workflow is spread across multiple monitors with a lot of windows open at once, this cuts out most of the clicking and squinting that the stock switcher makes you do.

6. Tiling Shell

Tiling Shell brings proper tiling window management to GNOME, going well past the basic two column split GNOME ships with by default. Drag a window and a snap assistant shows you where it'll land, with a built in editor for building your own layouts from scratch.

Layouts aren't rigid either. Span a window across multiple tiles, resize adjacent tiled windows together, and set a different layout for each workspace on each monitor.

Keyboard shortcuts handle the tiling too, so dragging windows around with the mouse is optional rather than being a neccessity.

7. Cronomix

Most productivity extensions do one job. Cronomix does several. Timer, stopwatch, Pomodoro tool, alarm, to-do list, time tracker, and even flashcards, all bundled into a single dropdown instead of five separate tools competing for your attention.

The Pomodoro and timer functions cover the classic work-then-break rhythm, while the to-do list and time tracker give you somewhere to actually log what you did with the time instead of making guesses at the end of the day.

It follows a very different approach compared to the single-purpose extensions elsewhere on this list.

8. Notes With History

A lot of the sticky note extensions on GNOME haven't been touched in years, and installing one on a modern system usually means finding out the hard way. Notes With History puts a menu of notes in your panel instead of scattering note windows across your screen.

Click the icon, pick a note, and it's all there. 📝

Notes can be reordered to keep the most relevant ones near the top, and the panel icon itself is customizable so it's easy to spot at a glance.

9. Freon

A sluggish system without an obvious cause can be very annoying, especially when you are in the middle of a time-sensitive task with your manager breathing down your neck.

Freon puts important system stats like CPU, disk, and GPU temperature, alongside fan RPM and voltage info, right in the top bar for you to quickly figure out if there's a system-wide slowdown or an app that's misbehaving.

You can pick which sensors to show, switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit, and set the refresh rate for the metrics display. Though you will need your GPU manufacturer's driver installed to get GPU readings.

Bonus Tip ✨

If you don't want to install anything at all, GNOME has a few tricks up its sleeve, tucked inside Settings. Since GNOME 48, there's a Digital Wellbeing section that handles screen time and break reminders natively.

It tracks how much time you spend on screen each day and compares it against previous days and weeks.

You can set a daily screen time limit that triggers a notification once you hit it, with an option to turn the screen grayscale afterward as a nudge to step away. There are also built-in eyesight and movement break reminders.

It's not as configurable as something like Cronomix or a dedicated break reminder extension, but if you're already on GNOME 48 or later, the most basic productivity features are sitting right there waiting to be turned on.

Suggested Read 📖: Wireless file transfers are incredibly convenient, especially between Linux and Android devices.

As consumers, we are used to correlating handhelds with the big names like Valve's Steam Deck, Lenovo's Legion Go, and ASUS' ROG Ally. But these machines are geared towards gaming and are priced like it too.

Lately, a different segment has been getting just as much attention. Indie creators and small hardware outfits who are shipping handhelds built around open hardware, swappable parts, and running full Linux distros.

We have picked out eight such handhelds that range from fully assembled devices to bring-your-own board kits that expect you to bring your own board, battery, and storage.

1. CardputerZero

M5Stack has kept its Cardputer line going since 2023, updating it every so often. The original ran on an ESP32-S3, and so did the follow-up, the Cardputer-Adv, just with a bigger battery and more sensors bolted on. Howeverm, neither of them ran real Linux.

The CardputerZero changes that. It swaps the ESP32 for a Raspberry Pi Compute Module Zero, which is equipped with a Broadcom BCM2837 with a quad-core Cortex-A53 running at 1GHz and 512MB of RAM.

You get a 1.9-inch non-touch LCD with HDMI output up to 1080p, a 46-key keyboard, and a 1500mAh battery to keep it running, all of which fits into an 84 x 54 x 23.1mm shell you could mistake for a fat credit card.

The Standard model throws in an 8MP camera and a full IMU sensor suite; features the cheaper Lite version drops entirely. Both variants keep Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and a built-in app store that lets you flash community firmware without requiring a computer.

Suggested Read 📖: This Credit Card-Sized Linux Box Has a Keyboard

2. Mecha Comet

The Mecha Comet looks like a chunky Android phone at first glance, until you notice the 40-pin magnetic connector running along the bottom edge. Snap on a QWERTY keyboard with a trackpad, a gamepad with a dual D-pad, or a bare GPIO breakout, and the same device becomes a different tool entirely.

For the software, it runs Mechanix, Mecha's own Fedora-based distro powered by Linux 6.12, with the bootloader, kernel, and root filesystem all being published as open source. They are also committing to releasing the full PCB schematics once mass production starts.

You get to choose between two configurations; the cheaper one will get you an NXP i.MX 8M Plus, a quad-core Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.8GHz, paired with 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Step up to the higher tier, and you get an i.MX 95 with a six-core Cortex-A55 setup, yielding roughly double the GPU throughput.

Both of these are equipped with an NPU and share the same 3.92-inch AMOLED touchscreen that outputs at 1080 x 1240.

3. Orange Pi Neo

The Orange Pi Neo has been in the works since early 2024, being built as a joint effort between Orange Pi and Manjaro Linux.

The planned hardware for it is an AMD Ryzen 7 7840U chip, a 7-inch 1920x1200 display running at 120Hz, dual touchpads modeled after the Steam Deck's, and Hall effect joysticks with RGB lighting.

Sadly, it is running quite late, and the recent hike in DDR5 RAM and SSD prices has only added to the delay, with Philip Müller, Manjaro's project lead, saying that they are waiting for a good time to launch.

I added this to the list because, on paper, this looks like a capable Linux-powered handheld; would've been a bummer to skip.

4. PocketTerm35

Waveshare has designed the PocketTerm35 around a dedicated RP2040 microcontroller that handles the keyboard, screen brightness, and volume control duties, freeing up the main board to just run Linux.

That main board can either be a Raspberry Pi 4B or a Pi 5, both of which slot in as the actual compute hardware doing the work. Software-wise, it runs a full Linux desktop with a terminal and command-line tools included, and it's compatible with RetroPie for retro gaming.

It is sold in four different configurations. Two come with a Pi 4B or Pi 5 already installed along with a preloaded SD card and heatsink, and two are accessory-only kits for anyone supplying their own board.

5. piBrick PocketCM5

Ahmad Amarullah, an Indonesian maker, has spent considerable time refining what eventually became the piBrick PocketCM5. The final design pairs a Raspberry Pi CM5 with a BlackBerry BBQ20 keyboard, complete with its own integrated trackpad, inside a compact 80 x 145 x 19.6mm shell.

The screen is a 3.92-inch AMOLED panel running at 1080 x 1240 and a 90Hz refresh rate, output over MIPI/DSI. Full-size HDMI and micro-HDMI are both present too, so you're never lacking in ways to get an image onto a bigger screen.

Ports are expansive for something this size. You get 1x USB 3 Type-A, 1x USB 3 Type-C, 1x USB 2 Type-C, and 1x USB 2 Type-A, plus an internal USB 2.0 header, an I2C connector, and a GPIO extension header for anyone who wants to wire something in.

Every part of it, the PCB schematics, the 3D-printable case, and the keyboard firmware, is published openly on GitHub. The full DIY kit without the CM5 is listed on Tindie but was out of stock at the time of writing.

6. Pilet

soulscircuit's Pilet hit its Kickstarter goal within five minutes of its debut. It is pitched as a retro open source computer that was initially built to house the Raspberry Pi 5, but, later, switched to the Raspberry Pi CM5 instead.

While my original coverage of it did insinuate that the board was included, the original listing never mentioned that was the case. The change in board requirements did stir up disappointment among backers, but the creators have pushed forward.

It is offered in two sizes, the 5-inch Pilet 5 with a retro console layout, and the 7-inch Pilet 7, a tablet variant running KDE Plasma. Both share a 1280x800 touchscreen and a custom battery module for USB charging.

7. RootBoard

RootBoard is a pocket-sized Linux terminal designed by tinkerer Dian Lieu, built as an open hardware shell rather than a finished gadget. The keyboard controller, firmware, and software are all left fully open for makers to inspect and modify.

The shell wraps a 3.5-inch color display with a 70-key QWERTY keyboard and a built-in speaker, but there's no touchscreen here. You navigate using the keyboard or an external mouse instead.

And you will need a Raspberry Pi Zero, Zero W, or Zero 2 W, as the RootBoard doesn't feature a CPU, memory, or storage.

8. MNT Pocket Reform

A German outfit, called MNT Research has come up with the MNT Pocket Reform, their take on a compact Linux handheld that takes pointers from the Reform laptop series.

It ships with Debian preinstalled, with custom versions of GNOME and Sway both preloaded as desktop options. Schematics, firmware, and case design files are all published under an open license, along with the rest of the Reform hardware lineup.

If you go for this, you get to pick between three processor modules, an NXP i.MX8M Plus (via Crowd Supply), a Rockchip RK3588, or a Qualcomm QCS6490. You can swap between them later since the CPU sits as a removable card rather than being soldered down.

There's also the 7-inch display that sits above a mechanical ortholinear keyboard and an optical trackball.

Suggested Read 📖: If you are interested in Raspberry Pi-powered handhelds, we have a separate list for that.

There's no shortage of free backup tools on Linux. The problem is choosing which one to use.

The choice of backup tool depends on what you're actually doing. Someone backing up a home folder on a GNOME desktop has nothing in common (backup tool wise) with someone running five servers and a NAS.

In other words, different types of Linux users would have different need of a backup software.

Let me share you a variety of backup tools you can use in a variety of situations in Linux.

Back up tools for Linux users

At a glance, for our busy readers:

Desktop Linux users running GNOME will get the smoothest experience from Déjà Dup. It's already in most GNOME-based distros and asks almost nothing of you. Connect it to Google or One drive or some network server for offsite backups.

Individual professionals and small teams need commercial-use licensing as much as features. Kopia is the strongest fit here. Open source, no restriction on business use. MSP360 Free covers the cloud-backup workflow well but is licensed for personal use only, so it's a better match for a side project than client data.

Sysadmins and homelabbers managing more than one servers should look at BorgBackup, Restic, or UrBackup. The choice really comes down to whether you want a CLI tool on each machine or one server watching all of them.

1. Déjà Dup: Best For Desktop Linux Users

Take Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation, basically any GNOME-based distro, odds are Déjà Dup is sitting in your app menu. Just search for "Backups." in the GNOME Activity. Pick what to back up, pick where it goes, set a schedule. That's the whole process.

It moved to a Restic backend a while back, so under the hood you're getting all the goodness of Restic, proper incremental snapshots, not just a folder copy. And all this without ever opening a terminal, Restic is CLI after all.

You can choose to store the backup in Google Drive, OneDrive, local folder (but what's the point), network server (NAS) or use RClone to any cloud storage of your choice.

There is one thing you should note. Déjà Dup backs up what your user account can access. Your home folder, basically. It's not a system backup tool, and it won't help you recover a broken OS install. For protecting personal files on a single desktop, though, it's close to ideal. For system backups, try Timeshift.

2. MSP360 Free Backup: Best For Personal-Use Cloud Backup Option

MSP360 Free Backup is one of the few free tools that bring real cloud backup to Linux without asking for a subscription. On Linux, MSP360 is more of CLI-first tool. The free edition is described as a command-line tool that automates file-level backups and schedules through cron. And that puts it closer to how Restic or Borg operate. There's a GUI installer if you want it, but MSP360's documents point Linux users toward cron-based automation as the main path.

You get flexible choice for storing the backup files. Local storage, network shares, or your own cloud account through Backblaze B2, Wasabi, or any S3-compatible provider.

The free edition is capped at 5TB locally and 5TB in the cloud. Incremental backup support is included, and automation runs through cron rather than a built-in GUI scheduler.

The free tier is licensed for personal use and won't run on domain-joined machines (if you don't know what that is, don't worry). Some advanced security and management features, including centralized management, are reserved for paid editions.

If you want free cloud backup on Linux and don't mind a cron job standing in for a GUI scheduler, this could be worth a try. Kopia is the nearest comparison to MSP360.

3. Kopia: Open Source and Cloud-Ready

Kopia is an open source cross platform backup tool for Linux, Windows and macOS. This doesn't mean that it is strictly a GUI tool. KopiaUI sits on top of the CLI, and scheduling, deduplication, and end-to-end encryption all works from there.

On the storage side, it covers a lot of groundyou have all the standard options. S3-compatible buckets, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, SFTP, WebDAV, plus the usual local and network drives. All of it runs through your own storage accounts. Kopia doesn't provide storage, just the backup tool.

There is some learning curve here. You'll need to understand repositories and policies first. Not difficult, exactly, but not plug-and-play either. And because Kopia has less of a track record than Restic, testing your restores before you depend on them is worth the extra ten minutes.

4. BorgBackup: The Terminal-Native Choice for Linux Servers

BorgBackup feels like it was built specifically for the hardcore sysadmins. SSH, cron, systemd timers, no GUI required unless you bolt one on separately like Vykar. It's a strong fit for home servers, NAS boxes, and homelab setups where a GUI is a secondary need.

Borg builds deduplication, compression, and authenticated encryption straight into how it stores data, so both storage costs and bandwidth stay down over the long run. The feature that I find awesome is that you can mount a Borg backup and poke around it like a normal filesystem, instead of pulling an entire archive just to grab one file.

Cloud object storage isn't native here. Borg expects local drives or SSH-accessible remote servers. Getting it to talk to S3 or Backblaze B2 usually means a hosted Borg-compatible service or extra tooling. If you're already comfortable with SSH and server management, none of that is a real obstacle.

5. Restic – Maximum Control, Minimum Hand-Holding

Restic asks for more from the user than anything else on this list, and gives back the most control in return. There's no GUI on Linux, no built-in scheduler. You bring your own cron job or systemd timer. What you get is a fast, snapshot-based backup tool where every run after the first only stores what changed, and every snapshot is independently restorable.

Encryption is handled automatically using a key derived from your password. Storage destination span local drives, SFTP servers, and S3-compatible storage, Backblaze B2, Azure, Google Cloud.

This is a tool for serious sysadmins and terminal junkies. If that's you, it's hard to find a more capable free option. If it's not, Kopia gets you most of the same capability with considerably less setup.

6. UrBackup: When You're Backing Up More Than One Machine

Every othre tool here is built around backing up one machine. UrBackup is what you could use when you manage a fleet of servers or computers. It's a central server with a web dashboard, pulling backups from all client machines you point it at, deduplicating across all of them to keep storage cost in check.

The process involves setting up a machine ((Linux, Windows, NAS etc) ) that runs the server and installing a lightweight client agent on every machine you want covered. After that, scheduling, monitoring, and restores all happen from the web interface, no need to log into each machine separately.

One thing worth noting is that UrBackup's image-based backup feature was built primarily for Windows clients. Newer versions do support extX and XFS image backup for Linux clients, but it's a less "battle-tested" path than the Windows side. That's why file-level backup is still the safer bet for Linux machines. Worth planning around if you're running a mixed fleet of Windows and Linux endpoints off one server.

Few Things to Keep in Mind

Backup type matter. True image-based, bootable disk backup, the kind EaseUS or Veeam offer on Windows, barely exists for free on Linux. Clonezilla is there but I can never make it work. Most tools in Linux do file-level, snapshot-based backup instead which is fast, space-efficient, but not a one-click bare-metal restore.

Automation varies more than you'd expect. Déjà Dup, Kopia, and UrBackup all include scheduling as part of the product experience. MSP360, Restic, and BorgBackup are the exceptions. They expect you to wire up cron or systemd timers yourself, which is standard practice for Linux users but worth knowing if you're coming from a Windows background where scheduling is baked into the GUI by default.

Multi-machine management is where UrBackup earns its place on this list. None of the other five tools here are built to backup a fleet of machines from one dashboard.

FAQs

Do you need GNOME to use Déjà Dup? No, but you'll get the smoothest experience there since it's designed around GNOME conventions. It runs on other desktop environments too, just without the same level of integration.

Isn't rsync good enough for backup? Rsync syncs files. It doesn't keep historical versions by default. Delete or corrupt a file, then sync, and now your "backup" has the corrupted version too. Restic, Kopia, and Borg all keep point-in-time snapshots for exactly this reason, so you can go back to before the mistake happened.

Can any of these handle a remote VPS or headless server? Yes. Restic and BorgBackup are both built around exactly that scenario, run entirely from the command line with no desktop required. UrBackup can also back up headless machines if you install just the client agent.

What's the real difference between free and open source here? MSP360 Free is a limited free tier of a commercial product personal use only, some features are reserved for paid plans. Déjà Dup, Kopia, Restic, Borg, and UrBackup are all open source, broader usage rights, no features locked behind a paywall.

Should you combine more than one of these backup tools? Yes. See what fits your need.

So, Which Backup Tool to Use on Linux?

If you just want the shortcut:

• GNOME/Linux desktop, zero setup: Déjà Dup
• Free cloud backup, don't mind a cron job or non-open source: MSP360
• Want a GUI with open source: Kopia
• Live in the terminal, want full control: Borg or Restic
• Managing more than one machine: UrBackup

And let me end this with excellent advice on backups:

Ever since it first appeared as a credit card-sized computer, the Raspberry Pi has quietly reshaped how we think about cheap, hackable hardware. Its ability to run fully-fledged Linux distros and GPIO pins for wiring up sensors and motors all while being cheap is what drew people in.

Of course, recent hikes across its lineup have made things harder for tinkerers, but that's the price they have to pay for access to a well-established ecosystem.

That ecosystem covers a lot of ground too. Between the standard boards, the Zero line, and the Compute Modules meant to sit inside custom carrier boards, there is a Pi suited for nearly every kind of project.

Makers and small companies have leaned on this range to build all sorts of things, and some of the results barely look like the underlying device anymore.

With this list, we will be taking a look at a few handhelds that will make you wonder what more a Raspberry Pi can do.

The List

1. Hackberry Pi CM5

The Hackberry Pi CM5 is an open source handheld built by Zitao, an engineering student at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany.

At the front sits a 4-inch 720x720 touchscreen, paired with a repurposed BlackBerry keyboard (Q10, Q20, or 9900 layouts), and the keys can be remapped through Vial if the default mapping does not suit you.

Powering it is a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, running on a quad-core Cortex-A76 chip clocked at 2.4GHz, and a 5000mAh battery keeps it running for roughly five hours on standby or three to four hours of active use.

There are two ways to get one. Elecrow sells a barebones kit for $158 to $168, but you will need to source your own Compute Module 5 and put it together yourself. If you want it ready to use, Carbon Computers sells a fully assembled version starting at $449, with prices climbing to $1,049 for higher RAM and storage.

2. PocketTerm 35

You will notice further on that most handhelds on this list trade the standard Raspberry Pi board for a Compute Module to save space. The PocketTerm35 is Waveshare's pocketable Linux terminal, built around a full Raspberry Pi 4B or Pi 5.

It features a durable 3.5-inch 640x480 display and a 67-key silicone keyboard that can be used for code entry, command execution, and general editing. An RP2040 chip handles input, screen brightness, and volume control.

The device itself measures 93.5 x 168.5 x 37mm, with an aluminum faceplate on the front and a plastic cover on the back.

Prices on the Waveshare store start at $87.99 and go up to $181.99. The cheap end is the bare accessory kit, useful if you already have a spare Pi board to drop in. The higher end gets you a fully loaded setup with a Pi 4B or Pi 5, a 64GB card, and a 5000mAh battery.

3. Pi Slate

The Pi Slate is Carbon Computers' take on a portable cybersecurity workstation, built around a Raspberry Pi 5 in a shell slim enough for daily carry. Two integrated antenna mounts sit at the top corners, so GPS, LoRa, or SDR radio modules can be bolted on without modifying the case.

The 5-inch touchscreen runs at 1920x720, and below it sits an RGB backlit keyboard with a gyroscopic cursor built in for pointer control. You get a 10,000 mAH battery as well, which is rated for 3 to 5 hours of use.

Carbon Computers sells the Pi Slate fully assembled, starting at $449 for the 2GB/32GB Pi 5 configuration, climbing to $749 for the 16GB/128GB version with more storage. A barebones kit without the Pi 5 goes for $299, and a separate radio kit with GPS, LoRa, and SDR support costs $149.

4. uConsole

The uConsole does not lock you into one chip. ClockworkPi sells four interchangeable core modules for the same shell, and which one makes sense depends entirely on what you want to do with the thing.

The Raspberry Pi CM4 core is the ideal choice for daily use, coding, emulators, and anything that benefits from Raspberry Pi's software support. Complementing that, you get a 5-inch display running at 1280x720, with a 74-key backlit keyboard, a trackball that doubles as a mouse, and a D-pad with four buttons wired in for emulator controls.

An optional 4G LTE module adds cellular data, and the whole thing runs on replaceable 18650 Li-Ion batteries rather than a sealed battery pack. Plus, schematics and other design-related files can be found on GitHub.

5. Cybert.

Cybert. is yet another Carbon Computers offering; this one traces back to a concept called the MC01. Initially, it was built around the Raspberry Pi CM4, but later versions added support for the CM5 along with a custom QMK-compatible keyboard and a BlackBerry touch sensor for a cursor.

The handheld is now at v3.2, powered by a CM5, offering two additional USB 3.0 ports along with a standard M.2 SATA slot for adding things like an SSD, AI accelerator, LoRa, or a 4G LTE module.

For the display, it features a 4-inch 720x720 touchscreen and has wide Linux distro support, ranging from Raspberry Pi OS, Kali Linux, to other popular distros.

It is sold as a bare PCB and case, not a finished device, priced at $199 when in stock. You will need to source your own Compute Module, the display, a LiPo battery, and even a BlackBerry 9900 touch sensor separately to finish the build.

6. Strike

This handheld has a built-in SX1262 LoRa radio, letting you join Meshtastic mesh networks and talk to ATAK, the tactical mapping software used by military and first responder teams.

None of the other handhelds on this list have a radio like this built-in.

A Compute Module 4 sits inside, powering it all, with a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a QWERTY keyboard for tackling daily use, and GPIO, I2C, and SPI headers for anything else you want to wire up.

There are two editions on offer; the Base Edition ships without an SD card, and you have to manually install an operating system like Raspberry Pi OS, RetroPie, or emteria.OS, while the Ready Edition comes preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS and Meshtastic already configured.

At the time of writing, SpecFive only listed the Ready Edition of Strike for $434.99, though every color is currently sold out.

Suggested Read 📖: 11 Interesting ESP32 Microcontroller Projects

Ptyxis is a modern terminal emulator built with GTK4 and libadwaita. It provides a cohesive look for the GNOME desktop, making it feel like a natural part of the system.

The application was specifically developed to meet the needs of modern software development workflows. In my opinion, its standout feature is the seamless container support for tools like Podman, Distrobox, and Toolbox.

Ptyxis is rapidly gaining popularity across the Linux community. It has already become the default terminal for many modern distributions, including Fedora and the upcoming Ubuntu releases.

As I have been using it for some months now, let me share some of my favorite features in this new terminal. I hope you like them as much as I do.

Tabs and Overview

The first thing you notice when opening Ptyxis is the tabs and overview system. While other emulators like GNOME Terminal or Kitty use a standard tab bar, Ptyxis introduces a visual tab selector that feels very similar to the GNOME Activities overview.

If you have multiple tabs open, you can simply click the Show open tabs button in the top-right of the title bar.

This opens an interface where each tab displays its title alongside a small preview, making it easy to see exactly what is running before you click back into a full view.

The flexibility here is excellent because you can drag and drop tabs in the overview to rearrange them.

You can also pin important tabs to keep them visible at the top of the list at all times.

My favorite feature, however, is the ability to easily custom name your tabs and search through them later. By right-clicking a tab in the overview and selecting "Set title," you can choose to either prepend a name to the default process or create a completely custom title.

Once your tabs are named, you can use the search button in the top-left of the title bar to find exactly what you need. This is incredibly helpful when you are managing a large number of active sessions simultaneously.

Color Schemes

A standout feature of Ptyxis is the support for a wide range of preset color schemes. You can access these options by opening the preferences window through the three-dots menu in the top-right of the title bar.

Once inside the Appearance tab, click on the "Show all palettes" option to see the full list. The interface provides a neat preview for each selection, and your chosen theme is applied immediately.

In my opinion, the way these colors adapt is impressive. The scheme is applied intelligently to the tab bar as well, ensuring the entire terminal maintains a cohesive and professional look.

Among the vast list of options, I have a few specific favorites that I think look incredible. Omni, Pixiefloss, and Tomorrow Night, Ubuntu are all excellent choices that provide a very modern feel.

Scrollback Search

The ability to search through what appears on your screen is a massive help during long sessions. While tools like grep are great for text files, you often need to find specific information directly within the shell scrollback.

For example, if you have displayed a massive log file using the cat command, you can quickly find what you need without re-running the command. By pressing SHIFT + CTRL + F, a search interface opens at the bottom of the terminal.

The extra search filters provides better matching. You can choose to match case, match whole words, or even use regular expressions to narrow down your results.

The interface includes simple navigation buttons to move up and down through your search matches. This makes it incredibly easy to jump between different instances of a term within a long output.

Container Support

This is the flagship feature of Ptyxis. The terminal works directly with container technologies like Podman, Distrobox, and Toolbox to make your development workflow much smoother.

If your system has containers using these platforms, Ptyxis detects them automatically and provides a dedicated way to access them. You can simply click the dropdown button in the top-left of the title bar and select a specific container from the list to launch it instantly.

The ptyxis-agent coordinates with your system to handle the discovery and management of these environments. For example, if you are using Distrobox, Ptyxis will execute the proper run commands for you behind the scenes.

Profiles

Okay. This is not new. Almost all modern terminals support the profile feature and yet I think that profiles are the most underrated feature that many people often ignore.

How do they help? Let's say you want to try a new shell like ZSH, you can create a specific profile for it instead of changing your entire system shell. You could also create a dedicated profile for a terminal multiplexer like Zellij.

Ptyxis has excellent support for profile creation and management. You can find these options in the Profile section of the Preferences window.

By default, you will only see an Untitled Profile, but you can use the Add Profile button to create something new. The profile creation dialog is vast and offers many different options.

You can set specific color schemes, choose a custom shell, or even assign a default container to a profile. For example, I can create a profile that automatically opens my Ubuntu Distrobox container every time I launch it.

Once your profiles are set up, you can set one as the default for all future terminals. Alternatively, you can quickly switch between your different profiles using the dropdown menu in the title bar.

Context Awareness

Ptyxis can intelligently identify your current context, such as active root privileged windows or SSH connections. This provides immediate visual feedback about the environment you are working in.

For example, if you run a command using sudo, the title bar of the terminal turns red to notify you of the changed privilege level. If you log in as the root user, the title bar remains red until you finally log out.

Some hidden gems

Apart from the major features I mentioned above, Ptyxis also has a few more tiny functions that deserve attention. The Shortcuts option in the Preferences window allows you to alter existing keyboard combinations or add new ones for various terminal actions.

An advanced addition is the Terminal Inspector. This tool allows you to monitor exactly what is running in the terminal at any given moment, which is a massive advantage for developers.

You can use the inspector to track underlying shell processes, monitor mouse pointer locations, and even peek at OSC (Operating System Command) hyperlinks. It is a specialized feature that makes debugging terminal-based applications much easier than before.

I can see why Ubuntu and Fedora made it default

Ptyxis is a good upgrade from the classic GNOME Terminal. While the container integration might not be for everyone, the app has significantly improved many day-to-day features that improve the overall experience.

What do you think about this new terminal emulator? Will you use it as your main terminal, or are you sticking with your current favorite? Share your opinions in the comments section!