Your internet workplace inside a Unix terminal

We talked about remote desktops before. It's not that easy, using your remote applications on your local machine, mostly you need a complex architecture or installed software.

You might have used PuTTY before, a text mode terminal emulation for Windows you can use to connect to Unix/Linux boxes.

Ever thought about using a terminal like this to get your things done?

Here is a list of interesting tools:

1. Multi sessions: screen - works like a virtual desktop manager for Windows/KDE, here you open just one terminal, but you can create as many additional screens as you like, you toggle between them with hot keys and so can use many tools at the same time
   
2. Read your emails: mutt - email client with many features. You can read your local inbox, imap and pop3 mailboxes, send emails and attachments
3. Surf the web: links2 - text mode browser
   
4. instant messaging: centericq - fantastic text mode client that connects you to your buddies at Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, AIM and Jabber.
5. rss feed reader: raggle / snownews - two good feed aggregators
6. downloaders: ctorrent / curl - access to the torrent network and file downloader
7. blogging engine: nanoblogger - write and maintain your blog inside the shell
   

If you set up these tools on your shell account, you are able to connect to your workplace from anywhere in the world, no matter if that machine is running Windows, Linux, MacOs, or Unix. And all traffic between your local box and your remote workplace is encrypted.

technorati tags: unix, shell, terminal