Got a Linux box and an hour to kill this weekend? Whether you’re trying to shrink a video that won’t send or you just want to tinker with something delightfully weird, these two native Linux apps from this week’s picks are worth installing. Both are practical, both are free, and both take minutes to set up.
Linux apps (Credits: How-To Geek)
1. Constrict: Shrink Any Video to Fit an Upload Limit
The problem: you try to upload a video — to an email, a chat, a forum — and it fails. The file is simply too big, and opening a full video editor or wrestling with FFmpeg flags feels like overkill.
The fix: Constrict is a lightweight video compressor that’s dead simple to use. Select the video file (it handles GIFs too), then just tell Constrict the target size. If your email client caps attachments at 20MB, set 20MB or below and let it do the math. Sane defaults cover everything else, but fine-tuning options are there if the first pass doesn’t look right.
A standout is the “Extra Quality” toggle: if you have time to spare, it produces a higher-quality result while still hitting your target file size.
How to install it: it’s on Flathub. Pull it with one terminal command:
flatpak install flathub io.github.wartybix.Constrict
2. Cranny: A Terminal App That Loops Music on the Hour
The pitch: cranny is a terminal-based music player with exactly one listening mode — it loops an individual song, then swaps to a new one every hour. If you’re an ambient-music-on-repeat person, or you like your soundtrack to shift with your mood and activity through the day, this oddly specific design might be perfect.
The backstory: cranny is the spiritual successor to the developer’s earlier project Nook, a browser extension that played hourly music from Animal Crossing. Nook later became a Linux desktop app, got abandoned, and now lives again as a terminal-based version. Weekend-project energy at its finest.
How to install it: check the project’s page on GitHub (or the source article linked below) for the latest release and install instructions for your distro.
That’s your weekend starter kit. Both apps are small, native, and solve real annoyances — the way weekend Linux projects should.
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Source: How-To Geek — read the full story there.
