the GNU packages that I need most seriously on my Synology NAS

CAVEAT: In 2017 I started using opkg (Entware-NG) instead of ipkg (optware). This document may not be updated entirely to reflect the new circumstances.

theses are the GNU packages I seriously need on my Synology NAS (there is actually more than one …):

$ sudo opkg list_installed
bash - A bourne style shell.
coreutils - Bunch of heavyweight *nix core utilities.
diffutils - contains gnu diff, cmp, sdiff and diff3 to display differences between and among text files.
exif - A small command-line utility to show and change EXIF information in JPEG files. // entware-ng does not have it
file - Ubiquitous file identification utility.
findutils - File finding utilities.
gcc - The GNU Compiler Collection.
ghostscript - … // includes ps2pdf
gkrellmd - Gkrellm is a utility to display system stats (cpu, processes, memory,..) in a nice little window. // server component
glib - The GLib library of C routines.
grep - Global regular expression parser.
gzip - GNU Zip data compression program. // provides: zless, zgrep, …
iconv - Character set conversion utility
less - Less file browser.
make - examines files and runs commands necessary for compilation.
nail - command-line email-client supporting POP3, IMAP, SMTP, …
perl-text-csv_xs - Text comma-separated values manipulation routines.
perlbase-cpan - CPAN perl module. // will install lots of other useful CPAN modules
poppler-utils – … // includes pdftohtml; better than the xpdf package
procps - PROCPS System Utilities.
psmisc - A set of some small useful utilities that use the proc filesystem.
rcs - The Revision Control System (RCS) manages multiple revisions of files.
rsync - fast remote file copy program (like rcp).
unzip – …
vim - Yet another version of the vi editor.
wget - A network utility to retrieve files from the Web.
# I assume these ones get installed indirectly:
pkgconfig - Package configuration tool.
util-linux - A suite of essential utilities for any Linux system.
# a few more get installed "indirectly" for sure…

And BTW occasionally you want to do this:

# update list of available packages:
$ sudo opkg update
# upgrade all installed packages to latest version:
$ sudo opkg upgrade

“Even” on your NAS you may want to keep source controlled text notes, that’s why even good old RCS may make sense.

Maybe it’s worth installing the “Toolchain” according to this description:

$ sudo ipkg list | fgrep optware-devel
optware-devel - This is a meta package that bundles all the packages required for optware native development. When fully functional, it should …


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