Old Tools
When Linux is your main desktop OS, there are lots of choices for music players but most don’t work well or have odd limitations. Clementine is simple, works well, and can handle my library.
PHP frameworks have been around for a long time. Laravel is a game changer and not only provides a great framework, but so many other tools that make development much easier.
Need a quick and easy WordPress development environment? VVV’s got you covered. You can be developin’ in minutes.
Virtual machines can be a lot of work and tricky to set up. Vagrant takes out the guess work and gives you a consistent VM any time, anywhere.
Sometimes you need another computer (or six) within your computer. VirtualBox is my go-to virtual machine manager. It’s free and easy to set up, with support for pretty much any operating system as a guest.
Programmers frequently need an easy way to do various screen shots. Shutter is an easy way to do various screen shots on Linux.
MySQL is the database that makes so many web sites possible. PHP might power the web, but MySQL is usually right behind there providing the data necessary for today’s web sites.
PHP: It started as some C programs for a personal home page more than 20 years ago, and the Internet wouldn’t be the same without it.
Over the years, PHP’s demise has been predicted, but it’s really stronger than ever.
A text editor is at the heart of a developer’s workflow.
Sublime Text 3 was my primary editor until recently and continues to be an important part of my toolbox.