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Comment by irthomasthomas | Hacker News Reader

Autohotkey is the only windows thing I miss on Linux.

And it seems impossible to even discuss desktop automation with contemporary Linux DE people, they just glaze over. "Like, why would you want apps to be able to control other apps, that sounds dangerous! We definitely want to protect you from that in Wayland.... Oh, what's that? You are a large consultancy that uses time tracking apps to help with billable hours? I guess you have to change your business model"

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Check out https://bitbucket.org/mfeemster/keysharp/ and https://github.com/phil294/AHK_X11, two attempts at reimplementing AHK on Linux. The former is v2 but not usable yet, the latter is by me, v1 "classic" and somewhat incomplete.

Many thanks. How do they compare with autokey? I haven't tried it properly, but it gets mentioned a lot. https://github.com/autokey/autokey

I haven't used AutoKey personally, but it's quite capable and generally "just" a Python library that also happens to ship with its own optional editor (https://autokey.github.io/autokey/_images/AutoKey_Scripting....).

Keysharp / AHK_X11 on the other hand ship their own runtimes that will be / are compatible with the actual programming language AutoHotkey v2 / v1 and thus cannot be used in conjunction with other languages, apart from shell invocation. For a detailed feature comparison with AutoKey you will have to research this yourself, but there's at least one feature which is exclusive to AHK_X11 right now, and that is accessibility-related commands such as ControlClick or WinGetText.

AHH that's very interesting and useful. I'll definitely check them out.

Same. I also really miss Hammerspoon and Karabiner from macOS. Just being able to remap custom keyboard shortcuts for specific applications was so nice. On Linux, most things are customizable enough that I can get by without it, but it feels like a major missing piece.

I used AutoHotkey to send keystrokes as media commands to an mpv window (if one is open somewhere in the background -- so I don't have to alt-tab from games) and as those literal keystrokes to the rest of the system. On Linux, I do that with `xdotool`. But that's an X11 thing; on Wayland, yeah, there's probably no `xdotool` replacement yet. :p

ydotool and dotool are subsets of replacements, but for me the missing part on Wayland is getting the cursor position, which is a game of hot potato - Wayland says it's the compositor's job, compositors say it's the app's job, so the capture app has to draw a temporary full-screen overlay to register a cursor position on it.

It's like asking someone "where am I" and them setting off a contraption that drops a bowling ball on some dominoes that launches a parakeet into a blanket covering a street sign to knock it off and show you. It's all very clever and allegedly safer than just saying it out loud, but also stupid.

Yeah this is definitely missing on Linux. I do agree with the sentiment that password managers shouldn't use this kind of API (they should use something designed to transfer secrets between processes instead!). But the automation scenario is still perfectly valid. Something like selenium-for-desktop would be superb.

Its possible - atleast on xorg, but why not write scripts in your favourite language to do the same automation instead of using a third party app ?

I think it makes a big difference having something that is domain focused. I remember being new to it, I'd open the windows menu > Autohotkey > and it had two things, I think, the manual and Windows Spy. I think that manual is one of the best I've read and easily made up for the jankyness of the syntax. And the manual instructs you to open windows spy and click anywhere on a window that you are interested in and it tells you everything you could possibly need to know to read and interface with any window control. And if you get stuck, they had an awesome forum full of people working on the same types of problems. And of course you could also embed python, c or c# (probably others, too) or you could embed autohotkey scripts in python, and so on. So, while I know that most automation can be done (if using X11) on Linux, the friction is way higher. And it's a shame because when it comes to non-gui automation GNU/Linux kills it.

I miss everything search engine too. Nothing similar exists.

Was missing total commander but now that is solved with double commander.

Have you checked fsearch? https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch It got very good in the last 1-2 years and while ext4 fs don't support a file index like NTFS does, fsearch is still very fast, caches its results, offers similar features etc.

Now that ntfs3 has landed in the kernel 6, I wonder if locate/updatedb could leverage this file index? (I do plan a full-ntfs3 Arch or Linux install soon to experiment with such weird ideas :)

No. Looks promissing, thanks for the info!

Ui.Vision dekstop automation is cross-platform works on Linux and macOS (and Windows). It is not exactly the same, though.

People are sleeping on Windows Power Automate too

You are a large consultancy but too broke to pay anyone to write software? Yeah, then changing your business model is probably long overdue.

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