Bonus: Closing the Cs, and a confession

It’s that time again. By my best estimations, I’ve come to the end of the C portion of the list. This was a long one too.

What remains follows, lumped as usual into two larger headings: software that I just can’t seem to wrap my head around, and software that is somehow inaccessible either through age or error in transcription.

To be clear, you’ll see things here that might fall into other general areas that I won’t pursue:

shells,
codec-specific audio players,
algorithm-specific compression tools, and
revision control systems.

The rationale for those is here. Let’s begin. First, that which eludes K.Mandla, or which I omit:

cbr2pdf: I looked this over, but I believe it is intended to work as a script converting cbr or cbz files to pdfs, within Nautilus. I suspect it could probably work from the command line without too much mangling. It didn’t strike me as particularly noteworthy though.
ccollect: ccollect is an incremental backup system, but it appears to rely on a server-client arrangement which I don’t have the resources for.
cdplay: This was one of many command-line CD players, but I balked at installing it because something in the AUR version conflicted with util-linux. I’d rather not tear that out just to try a CD player utility.
chronicle: I’m starting to wonder if I should add “blog backends” to my list of Things I Omit from This Blog. Again, I just don’t have the hardware resources to set up a blog using chronicle. For what it’s worth though, if I were to set up a dedicated site, this is probably the first software I would try.
cmail: cmail is a kind of play-by-mail system for gnuchess; let’s revisit that in the G section.
cmp: cmp goes hand-in-hand with diff; I’ll postpone this briefly. The D section is next.
config-manager: If I understand it correctly, this is an accessory for revision control systems, so I’m leaving this one alone. It’s also only in Debian that I can see, but maybe I’m wrong.
conky-cli: Technically speaking, this is intended for a graphical desktop. I know it has a meager array of tools that will run at the command line, but last time I looked they were only so-so, and struck me as an afterthought rather than a main feature. If you want to know more about it, start here, and maybe at the home page. Suffice to say it didn’t impress me enough last time to want to run through it again.
console-tools: I was torn on console-tools. But it’s Debian-only, and most of the tools I see in it (loadkeys, dumpkeys, etc.) are in kbd in other distros. I might hold off until the K section.
corkscrew: I believe I would need a proxy to set this up right; the home page describes this as a “tool for tunneling SSH through HTTP proxies.” Of course, in this day and age, it might be worth investigating more.
cpio: This gives you access to cpio archives; as I mentioned above, I don’t really want to wade through the hundreds of archive formats out there.
csh: An enhanced version of the Berkeley C shell from 1978; apparently it’s a lot like the C programming language. Either way, shells are also off my list.
cups and cups-pdf: This might sound like a cop-out, but I don’t have a printer. Yeah, I know. In this day and age too. 🙄
cutter: cutter shuts down connections on firewalls and routers; I have a feeling I’d need a full-scale firewall just to figure out how to test it. Sadly, I don’t have one of those.
cvs: Concurrent versions system, i.e., a revision control system, i.e., not something I can reliably evaluate.

And now, the ones I can’t find, or don’t work.

callweaver: I’ve seen third-party sites that describe callweaver as a cross-platform PBX project. But it’s not in AUR, and not in Debian, and the home page is unresponsive. It may have morphed into something else, or it may have lapsed altogether.
cdisk: I can’t find anything called “cdisk” anywhere.
cdp: This is a console CD player but I couldn’t build it in Arch and Debian doesn’t have it in its repositories. Supposedly it’s an improved version of workbone, but I didn’t see it happen. …
cdsuite: I really tried with cdsuite. I tried in both Debian and Arch, and I was quite excited, because it’s a simple little program that builds on cdparanoia, but uses musicbrainz to tag files. No luck. Python errors everywhere. See if you can do better; it’s almost uncharted territory.
centericq: I tried this in Arch but had no luck; it needed libicq2000, which in turn needed libsigc++, but even when that was installed, it couldn’t find the libraries it wanted. So the trickle of dependencies fails.
chess: I have “chess” in my list too, but I’m not sure now if that’s a code word or an actual program. I can’t seem to find it — or rather, there are so many programs that involve “chess” that the word “chess” alone isn’t enough of a hint for me. gnuchess, on the other hand, is coming.
chm2pdf: Similarly, this should convert chm files into PDFs, but it needs htmldoc, which wouldn’t build in Arch. The Debian version spat out errors when I tried to convert something.
colorize: There must have been a utility at some point called “colorize;” it’s exceptionally elusive now but I suspect it might have morphed into ccze. No proof, and I can’t find anything left from an original.
command: I have the word “command” in my list. Could I be any more vague? 😐
commview: The home page says this is a Windows-based program. If there’s a Linux version out there, I couldn’t find it.
connections: I wrote the word “connections” on my list, but that’s not really enough to go on. You try a Google search for “connections linux.” 😯
consolecandy: I really wanted consolecandy to work, but it needs libmpeg3 and the AUR version for that doesn’t build. In Debian I could build it, but nothing happened. Too bad, because it looks really cool.
contact script: Don’t ask me why, but I have “contact script” on my list. I don’t know what I was thinking of. 😐
copy-queue: copy-queue looks cool, but setting it up was a bit complicated and even after that, I only got Python errors. It might be out of date against what Python does these days, so if you can get it working, tell us how.
crackers: If there’s a program out there called “crackers,” the programmer needs to change the name so it’s easier to find.
cryptcat: … segfaulted every time I tried to use it in Arch. If this is a encrypted version of netcat, I might come back and try it again.
crywrap: I managed to install crywrap, but after that I wasn’t sure what I should be doing with it. If I understand it, it should relay connections to a separate location. Probably I set it up wrong.
cxfe: The “Console Xine Front-End,” if I found the right thing. The AUR version didn’t work for me, and I don’t think it’s in Debian.
cybercop: I’ve looked around but I can’t find anything called cybercop. It sounds like a filtering or content-control system; if you know about this one, tell me.

I think that’s it. D is next and the list is shorter. But first, an admission of error.

It seems I have been laboring for most of a year under the impression that I had somewhere between 500 and 600 applications total to sift through, with that number fluctuating slowly up or down depending on my free time and my mood.

I realize now that I had been basing that number on the number of files in my vimwiki directory, which was fairly accurate almost a year ago, when I started thinking over this endeavor.

But what has happened since then, is that I have collated some other lists, scoured some ancient blogs and tacked on entries in my wiki pages. Without necessarily creating files for them.

So I had programs listed in my wiki which didn’t have files in the directory. Just because I hadn’t thought to start a page for them yet.

If this is all a bit abstract, suffice to say that after a little tinkering and sifting through the wiki pages and touching a file for every entry there, the number has risen.

To nearly a thousand. 😯

So it looks like you and I will be here for a while longer. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but at some point in the future, the list has to come to an end. I hope. 😐