insect VS gnu-units

Apparently this replaces https://github.com/sharkdp/insect

You might like https://insect.sh/ ;)

For the record I use insect.

https://github.com/sharkdp/insect seems to be somewhat similar, but it's mostly for physical units. However, it's the only opensource one that is embeddable.

Insect: https://github.com/sharkdp/insect

It is a bit slow but has decent features, including some physical units support.

I set up Tilda (or another Guake equivalent; I tried a bunch of them and can’t remember on which I settled in the end) to run it automatically when a terminal is opened, when pressing Scroll Lock. It’s quite neat: when I need to do a quick calculation, I just hit Scroll Lock, which spawns a drop down terminal with the focus; then type whatever I want to calculate; then control-D to dismiss the drop down terminal and I am back in whatever I was doing without moving either hand off the keyboard.

I do more or less the same thing on my Mac with Alfred.

I'm in the same boat and will pay for Kagi, though I have a different interaction with a search engine and thought you might like the counterpoint. Notably, I don't use Google for most of what you described:

Translation: I use DeepL instead (google is doing poorly on Asian languages)

Conversion: not having much need for imperial but I use this for all unit conversion (though usually directly in my terminal): https://insect.sh/

Wikipedia: if I type Wikipedia+something my browser automatically use the wiki engine (chrome can do that too)

Word definition: on OSX I long press on the trackpad and the definition pops up (across languages, translation too for single words)

Lyrics: Spotify show them now! (admittedly that's a recent feature)

insect.sh goes up to about 109 × 1015.

you might want to try units(1).

https://www.gnu.org/software/units/units.html

the input language is less flexible than wolframalpha/google, but i quickly got used to it. it's nice to have something local and reliable. you can also define custom units.

i prefer using it in terse mode:

    $ units -t 0.03$/hr*1month

Yes, units must not be used for currencies, it relies on hardcoded conversion rates. The latest version uses prices from FloatRates (2020-11-15) for most currencies and services.packetizer.com/btc for bitcoin. So while units is very very good for units conversion, it's no good for currencies unless you don't need more than a crude rule of thumb.

Does the GNU projet makes it repositories available online ?

I'd like to have a look at the code but all I found is an outdated mirror : https://github.com/ryantenney/gnu-units