utility software (redirected from Software utility)

(tool)

utility software - (Or utility program, tool) Any software that performs some specific task that is secondary to the main purpose of using the computer (the latter would be called application programs) but is not essential to the operation of the computer (system software). Many utilities could be considered as part of the system software, which can in turn be considered part of the operating system. The following are some broad categories of utility software, specific types and examples. * Disks disk formatter: FDISK, format defragmenter disk checker: fsck disk cleaner system profiler backup file system compression * Files and directories list directory: ls, dir copy, move, remove: cp, mv, rm, xcopy archive: tar compression: zip format conversion: atob comparison: diff sort: sort * Security authentication: login antivirus software: avast, Norton Antivirus firewall: Zone Alarm, Windows firewall encryption: gpg) * Editors for general-purpose formats (as opposed to specific formats like a word processing document) text editor: Emacs binary editor, hex editor * Communications mail transfer agent: sendmail e-mail notification: biff file transfer: ftp, rcp, Firefox file synchronisation: unison, briefcase chat: Gaim, cu directory services: bind, nslookup, whois network diagnosis: ping, traceroute remote access: rlogin, ssh * Software development compiler: gcc build: make, ant codewalker preprocessor: cpp debugger: adb, gdb installation: apt-get, msiexec, patch compiler compiler: yacc * Hardware device configuration: PCU, devman, stty