Shashank Sharma knows more CLI tools than he does people, and is always looking for more. It’s why he misses deadlines. But no more!

CALCURSE

Credit: https://calcurse.org

OUR EXPERT

Shashank Sharma is a trial lawyer in Delhi and avid Arch user. He’s been writing about open source software for 20 years, and lawyering for 10.

Contrary to what some Twitter (sorry, X) threads would have you believe, getting up at C 5am and taking cold showers is not the only path to a productive day or week. In fact, simply making a note of all the tasks to be completed for a day or week can lead to being more productive – provided you do the work and complete the tasks.

Released under the BSD licence, Calcurse is a text-based organiser that features an Ncurses-driven interface. You can use the tool to keep track of important events such as birthdays and anniversaries, and also schedule appointments and everyday tasks. The default interface provides a list of all appointments for the week, as well as all your tasks in your to-do list. The notification system additionally informs you of upcoming deadlines to make sure you’re always on top of your assignments.

Many modern desktop distros, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Majaro, OpenSUSE and so on, feature Calcurse in their software repositories. However, not all of them offer the latest version. Refer to the project’s GitHub page (https://github.com/lfos/calcurse) for a distro-specific list and the version on offer.