The Perfect 10: Linux Desktop Apps
In the continuation of our Perfect 10 series, Jono Bacon and Stuart ‘Aq’ Langridge take a look at the top ten latest and greatest Linux desktop applications.
Our Perfect 10: Simple Scan, gEdit, Calibre, avant-window-navigator, D-Feet, Gwibber, Shutter, Mumble, Guake, XChat-Gnome
Of course, we are the very start of the conversation! What are your fave apps? Which lesser known applications help you do what you want to do every day? What are your fave games? What do you think about the applications that we picked? Share your thoughts in the shot comments…
109 Comments to “The Perfect 10: Linux Desktop Apps”
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EasyTag ( http://easytag.sourceforge.net ) It’s a great tool for renaming lots of audio files according to whatever file naming convention you subscribe to, it also supports ID3 tags and can read/write to them.
I wish something as good as it existed for video files but most apps I can find that do that are Windows-only.
I always liked picard (http://musicbrainz.org/doc/PicardDownload) for tagging. It has all the useful features of easytag plus it will fetch the tag information from MusicBrainz.
Oooh. I shall have to try it when I’m next tagging stuff. Does it also do renaming?
As a matter of fact it does.
GEdit and Gwibber are installed in Ubuntu by default, I call foul! They are awesome though
My submission: Inkscape. It’s the most awesome vector graphics editor around and it natively supports the much under-used SVG standard.
Inkscape is indeed awesome
I’m still learning to use it, and it really suprises me again and again how powerful it is.
GEdit got on the list because it does so much more than people expect of it. I very nearly added Inkscape myself, I must admit it
Inkscape is awesome.
Vim: Is an excellent text editor, has at least 100 times the possibilities of gedit
Hierarchtical notebook (hnb): An outliner that is blazingly fast and easy to get the grip of
bashpodder: for podcasts
tmux: terminal multiplexer, has more possibilities than screen
elinks: awesome web browser
newsbeuter: nice rss reader, light and fast
musca: A really simple and fast tiled window manager
dungeon crawl stone soup: rogue like game that is a lot of fun
abiword: a nice light wordprocessor for the times that someone demands .doc files
xterm: probably the most useful program of them all
ranger: novel and fast file manager
dmenu: a really nice application launcher
zshell: extends bash in a nice way, makes it more userfriendly
zsnes: a really nice snes emulator
file-roller: for extracting files
That’s some of the programs that I use the most, most of them are really light and fast, and they work nice without having to use the mouse, which is always a nice thing. It has to be said that I might be a strange user though, preferring to use the commandline when I can, but I just like the text interfaces a lot, since they tend to get rid of the clutter, and show you the things that you want/need to know, and lets you get to work.
Half of these are CLI apps, so I’m not sure they quite count (and I write as a big CLI person).
Hmm, yeah, you might be right about that, but though most of them are cli apps, they are most also programs that you interact with after you start them up in contrast to the one shot commands that just does what you tell them, so I think they can be counted maybe. I mean even though vim is a cli-app, it does what gedit does and even more
So I don’t really know where we should draw the destinction.
I am thinking about building a non-x pc later, it’s just that as it is now I have to have skype and xim (for japanese input) for schoolwork and communicating, so as for now it doesn’t work, but later that will be a fun experiment
Ah, but vim is not only a cli app. Gvim gives it a great graphical interface which I use almost daily.
Nice list, IMO CLI apps are fine, they are still applications, but they just use a text interface. The only thing on that list that I don’t think counts is the SNES emulator.
I don’t know how I feel about this being so CLI based; cool apps are cool apps, but bug 1 probablt requires a bit more in the way of GUI stuff.
Yakuake – a quake-like terminal emulator that pops down from the top of the screen when summoned by a keypress. Like Tilda, but prettier and based on Konsole.
MySQL Navigator – Ugly as sin but a really handy tool for running lots of MySQL queries and seeing the results side by side, easily refreshing query results, saving to CSV etc. Lots more stable than MySQL’s own tools too.
Kate – a wonderful text editor with all the syntax highlighting and stuff you’d expect, but also with a really powerful regular expression find-and-replace tool (which trumps GEdit by itself for me). Also allows you to edit files over FTP, SSH or any other KIO-supported protocol transparently.
Spotify – Stream pretty much any song you want to listen to when you want to legally for free (with the occasional advert). Not a native Linux app, but works like a charm under Wine.
Balsamiq Mockups – A really amazing UI Mockup tool with a “hand drawn” style. There’s a commercial version for the desktop that runs on AIR, but also a free online version that you can save/load from via XML exports at http://www.balsamiq.com/. I run the free version in Mozilla Prism to remove all the browser chrome.
Pino – More like Gwibber used to be a few versions ago before it went for the multi-column approach, I prefer it that way. Plus it has retweet buttons.
VirtualBox – Brilliant desktop virtualisation. Ideal if you need to run that other OS but dont like dual booting.
Yeah, Yakuake is ideal if you have a KDE desktop, just like Guake is for Gnome. I used Yakuake for a while even on my Ubuntu machine until Guake got better.
I hadn’t got all the way through the shot when I wrote that, otherwise I’d just have put “Guake for KDE”
Might give it a go for when I’m on GNOME.
I’d forgotten about Guake and had been using Yakuake under Gnome on Ubuntu for a while. Fantastic tool.
Another superlight version of this (I think Aq might have put me onto it, actually) is yeahconsole. Much simpler and uglier (only one terminal) but very fast.
I’ve noticed that somehow I managed to get a split terminal (ie two terminals side-by-side) under Yakuake. Anyone know a) how I did this (what was the keystroke) and b) how to do this in Guake? Thanks!
Hmm, I’ve gone back to Yakuake for the moment because Guake doesn’t grab the keyboard focus after you activate it (and it appears). Kinda broken, AFAICT. Will log a bug soon.
In Yakuake it’s Ctrl+Shift+L to split vertically, or Ctrl+Shift+T to split horizontally (I think it just takes the shortcuts from Konsole, you can change them from Yakuake’s menu)
Thanks very much, marxjohnson.
I’m not very familiar with Konsole, but I’ll look into it. Ta.
You may want to check out terminator, it allows you to split horizontally and vertically as many times as you want, and has a very nice set of shortcuts
You may be pleased to know that Spotify are porting to an actual Linux native app as we speak.
An awful lot of time, the only apps I have running are a web browser and
Terminator – a terminal manager which tiles the terminals. Sounds simple, but if you’re a big terminal user this is awesome. And every now and then I find an extra feature, such as Ctrl-Shift-X makes the currently selected terminal fill the window so you can see more. Then hit Ctrl-Shift-X again to give you the old layout back. Wonderful.
Apart from that apps I love include
DigiKam – the KDE photo manager. I tried F-Spot and I just didn’t really get on with it. I wanted more power and DigiKam gave it to me. It makes it really easy to upload to Facebook/Flickr/etc, and it also has pretty good handling of RAW files. Tagging works nicely. What’s not to like?
Conky – gives me an overview of my system, and you can include scripts, so I know when I did my last back up (hmm should do another one now), I can follow RSS feeds … Nice.
MyPasswordSafe – an encrypted password store. It uses the file format of the original passwordsafe written by the legendary Bruce Schneier. So it is compatible with programs on Windows and Mac OS X – just put it in Dropbox and you’re away. And there is also pwsafe – a command line program to use the same file.
Banshee – Fantastic replacement to the rather awful Rhythmbox.
Python – Yay!
Google Chrome
LMMS – The best multimedia tool I’ve ever used.
Cheese – Silly webcam fun.
Spotify
I rather like Rhythmbox, myself. What does Banshee give you extra?
I have to say I think I prefer RhythmBox now over Banshee. I tried Banshee because I thought RB was a bit crap, only to discover it wasn’t much better. I rarely mention this primarily because I can’t remember what I liked or didn’t like. I think I just found elements of functionality I expected were missing or things didn’t work.
RB is still missing some stuff I’d like: working through a proxy being one thing; a better interface for adding internet radio stations (currently: go to radio, context-menu to add station, type in URL, click okay, find the url in the list, context menu to edit its properties, then rename it – frickin’ awkward, and yes, I’ve looked at the code and it’s really foreign to me so I haven’t made any progress with submitting a patch or anything); thirdly, a nicer way to add album art or see why it won’t load it (come to think of it, it may be a proxy issue).
I must say that I am no fan of any of the music managers available. I tried banshee, but I absolutely hate the way banshee syncs with my droid. And the way it handles podcast, its stupid. I use RB, but it really doesnt sync with the droid, its drag and drop which I can handle. I ended up separating out the podcast client and use gpodder.
It gives you a brain aneurysm when you realize the damn thing is installing Mono just so you can listen to a few mp3s.
Why? Rhythmbox will install Python; Mono’s in the default install on Ubuntu anyway. Why care about which libraries an app needs? That’s like caring about the brand of mortar that someone used to build a house you’re thinking of buying.
Ah, that’s right! I guess it would have to be, now that F-Spot is the default image editor. Last time I tried to use Banshee I was using Xubuntu, which AFAICT, does not include Mono. So instead of the house/mortar analogy, it was more like getting an SUV because I needed a cigarette lighter.
I was kinda under the impression that Python is standard on Ubuntu too. Admittedly I haven’t looked into the code, but the feel I get from ShotOfJaq and from LugRadio is that Ubuntu is all C/C++ and Python (though with reliance on Mono for F-Spot and Tomboy). I rarely get the impression that much else (other than perhaps Perl) is really all that welcome.
It’s one of the reasons why I suggested discussing the idea of picking up the Java VM platform as standard in Ubuntu – because then you’ve got access to Python and Ruby (perhaps not Perl and C#) and a whole range of other languages right out of the box. I’m not saying Ubuntu should definitely take it up, just that it could be discussed. It always feels like the JVM is not accepted because of its early non-opensource days (might just be my biased impressions, of course). Perhaps things will change with Java7 (which will unify the opensource and proprietary versions).
I agree with Aq’s later comment that you shouldn’t really have to worry about what libraries are required, as long as the tool works (prime example being me using Yukuake on Ubuntu and needing to install half of KDE to do it).
Automatic music sync to the Nexus One; automatic filename and path rewriting when tags are changed; a nice cover art view.
Call mr Mr Thick, but Rhythmbox syncs with my N1 just as well as Banshee does. I’m not worried about rewriting the path (the whole point of a music player is to let me care about artists and not paths, no?) although I admit that there are some techie people who do not feel like I do…
How is this done? Mine does not sync at all. It shows which songs are available on the droid, but thats about it.
Damn, most of the stuff I use is in Ubuntu and other distros by default.
Still, there’s Quickly that helps me not having to learn how to make debs.
Okular is great for giving presentations if you have them in PDF. Unfortunately I don’t know of anything in Gnome that would come close to the kind of functionality you get w/ Okular.
And then there’s that game Slingshot. I don’t know how I’d waste time without it.
What presentation functions do you need for a PDF? All I’ve ever needed is a “next slide” button?
Impressive is pretty awesome for pdf slideshows.
Now I am playing Slingshot. Nice. I wish there was a 1 player mode, though.
I have just discovered yEd, a diagramming tool that is the closest I have seen to OmniGraffle and Visio for Linux.
http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html
Hm, tried it by jnlp and it never got past the splash screen. So, not too impressed
It’s still loading for me but it does say it needs Java 6. Have you got the latest, Aq? (Yes, you should get a decent error message if this is the issue, of course.)
Sweet – loaded for me under Ubuntu 10.04 (with Sun’s Java 6, update 20) and under Windows XP. Thanks for this.
If you’re going to have top 10s does it not make sense to have them listed? I can’t remember the eBook app you were talking about and I want to try it out, so now I’ve got to search through the shot again to find out what it’s called. I might spell it wrong too…
Links added to each app for Ubuntu users, as per popular request.
Thank you! Any chance you could add links to the Android Top 10 shot too?
Gnome-Do – need I say more?
+1 for Gnome-Do
Yes! Gnome-Do makes Gnome much friendlier for us keyboardy types.
Inndeed, but bonus mention for Docky – it’s the same underlying tech.
(al)pine. Fastest e-mail reader out there.
TrueCrypt, I mainly use it for passwords but it will handle anything. I think the encrypted virtual disk is great.
My top 10 (in no particular order)
vim + cscope – great for working on Linux kernel source
banshee – for ze tunes
getting things gnome – for keeping my TODO list straight
gPodder – podcast client
screen/byobu – I do most of my work on the command line, so having a persistent session I can attach to/detach from is huge
irssi – IRC client that goes great with screen
elinks – text-mode web browser that /also/ goes great with screen
pyroom – distraction-free text editor. Great for writing up docs or other things that require concentration
synergy/quicksynergy – for when you have to control multiple machines with one keyboard and mouse
tomboy – I know this comes with some distributions but the thing is so damn useful I can’t leave it out.
You mentioned taking screen shots and mentioned some limitations of the Gnome screen shot applet. However, the standard Gnome applet does let you take shots of the whole screen, just the current window, or just a selected area of the screen. It doesn’t have the other features you mentioned, but it’s still a great program.
For my own list of apps I would add:
1) gnome-open-terminal – This integrates into Nautilus and lets you open a terminal in the current directory by just right-clicking and selecting it. It may not be of much use to many people, but it’s very handy if you are writing software. I can’t live without it.
2) Inkscape – I’m not an artist, but I can use Inkscape to drag and drop SVG art into a drawing, paste that drawing into a web page, and then animate the SVG using AJAX techniques. It’s very impressive.
3) Gnome Planner – Everything that I ever needed to do with Microsoft Project I can do quite easily with Gnome Planner and I find Gnome Planner easier and faster to use. I’ve used it to manage commercial projects, and I have no hesitation about recommending it.
4) AVIDemux and DeVeDe – Edit and make DVDs which I can play on a DVD player.
5) Gimp – I can list this because it isn’t in the default Ubuntu install anymore!
6) Claws Mail – It’s not fancy, but it does everything I want for e-mail and it’s very, very fast.
7) I have to mention Twisted. If you’re not a Python programmer then you won’t care what Twisted is. If you are a Python programmer and don’t know what it is, then you need to find out because it’s brilliant.
mg: gnome-screenshot didn’t allow that nicely when I started using shutter
And DeVeDe…I’ve used it to create DVDs, but I wouldn’t put it down as a favourite application. It’s not that easy, and it should be. Still, I had Calibre despite its horrid UI, so I suppose DeVeDe’s allowed!
If you haven’t used DeVeDe in a few years, have a look at it again. The UI has changed a lot. When I first tried it, I couldn’t figure out how to make a DVD with it. Now it’s dead simple.
Oh, and in my previous message I meant “nautilus-open-terminal”, not “gnome-open-terminal”. I hope I didn’t confuse anyone with that.
Hi, I’m very interested in Linux but Im a Super Newbie and I’m having trouble deciding on the right distribution for me (Havent you heard this a million times?) anyway here is my problem, I need a distribution that can switch between reading and writing in English and Japanese (Japanese Language Support) with out restarting the operating system.
Ubuntu will do this, you just need to add both layouts in the keyboard options and go to the Gnome Keyboard Preferences / Layout Options tab. In the section ”Group Shift/Lock behaviour” you can choose the shortcut for switching the keyboard layout.
I added another very handy setting: When I switch to a non-default keyboard layout, the Scroll Lock LED on my keyboard is on. You can change this in the last section of the Layout Options tab (”Scroll Lock LED shows alternative group”).
one of my favourite apps is Zim – a desktop wiki. I use it to keep notes, sometimes even to write static web pages. it is very easy to link, tag and list. supports todo lists, calendar, and even LaTeX style equations (very useful for me). everything is kept in plain text files, with an option for version control. You get all the advantages of a wiki in the privacy of your desktop. did I say it is written in python?
Interesting. I basically use Tomboy for that. What advantages does Zim have over Tomboy?
Well, now that I try to compare the two I see that Tomboy has many of the features I believed to be unique for Zim… But I still prefer Zim for the different UI feeling. I don’t like the metaphor of sticky notes. sure, loosing them is not an issue with Tomboy like it might be in the real world, but I can’t help have some doubt about it. In Zim all the notes are organized in a tree structure and are presented in one window, so I get a sense of a well-organized notebook.
I see the theory, yep. I prefer the separate windows concept, so each to their own! Zim and Tomboy share a lot, though; you can imagine a Zim user interface using Tomboy’s note storage, so that you can seamlessly switch between the two, which would be nice. (This is the sort of thing that we’re trying to encourage with desktopcouch
)
“top ten latest and greatest Linux desktop applications.”
gEdit.
What?
Yep, gEdit. It’s a properly fantastic editor.
I agree. gedit = great edit.
Last time I used it, it did not support nested language hi lighting, i.e. it cannot hilight a block of CSS nested within a HTML document.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Pidgin yet. I use it for IM and IRC. The interface is intuitive and familiar to me as I used Adium on the Mac before switching to Ubuntu as my primary desktop about a month ago.
Chromium web browser is the other main app that I use that doesn’t come with my distro.
Pidgin is installed by default in most distros
Hmm, Pidgin didn’t come with the latest Ubuntu – but I later heard that it used to be, before Empathy replaced it as the default.
Single two features in Pidgin stopping me from swapping full time to empathy: OTR encryption and proxy support. It astonishes me that it won’t pick up the GNOME proxy setting whilst being the official GNOME client.
Another CLI I like is Byobu. I didn’t even know it was installed already if it weren’t for Ubuntu UK Podcast mentioning it one recent episode.
GmusicBrowser, Shutter, Deluge, nano, Tomboy, Virtualbox, Picasa, Cairo-Dock
+1 for InkScape.
Surprised no one has mentioned Emacs – is it really that bad? I quite like it. I’ll admit Gedit is a lot friendlier though (and I’m happy for vi for quick in-terminal editing).
One irritation I’ve found is that I’m sure I’d use a lot more of these apps if they worked behind a firewall but so many of them seem to have issues with proxies. Rhythmbox, Gwibber, and xchat-gnome all seem to not work behind a proxy. I’ve found it’s a known issue with Gwibber, based on a standard python library issue, but haven’t looked into xchat-gnome or RhythmBox yet.
Given there’s a system proxy setting (and has been for a few years now), it’s surprising so many apps seem to not use it. Or am I just lucky in picking the very few that don’t use it?
Great list, guys. I really like the idea.
My guess is that those applications are using ports besides 80 and 443. All proxied networks tend to block everything, then proxy just port 80, and pass through port 443(its encrypted).
You could get them to work by setting up an SSH tunnel or VPN to a machine outside of the network, but check its OK with the network admin first.
Yeah, I know that kind of thing can be set up but I can’t see myself making a strong enough business case. Maybe if I relied on IRC, but I don’t. Thanks for the tips though.
Indeed, desktop application are everywhere, it is good to know there are some available for linux users. Thanks. Add us up to share some good tweets about it http://www.twitter.com/tommallos.
GVim: Simply the best text editor in existence.
XMonad: Minimalist tiling window managers are much faster and easier to use on laptops because you don’t need a mouse. Being able to flick through multiple virtual desktops with the number keys is so nice.
Terminal: The XFCE terminal, simple tabbed terminal.
WiCD: Network manager that actually works well with tiling window managers.
LaTeX: Converts document writing from a boring slog(word processors) into an enjoyable experience. While also producing much better looking output.
Conky: Simple system monitor that displays on the desktop.
+1 for the Xfce terminal +1 for LaTeX, though it is not a desktop app, but a standard. And Stuart, gedit has a very good support for LaTeX.
1) Inkscape – SVG editor 2) G.I.M.P. – Image editor 3) Xournal – PDF annotator and notepad program ideally used with a tablet but can be used without a tablet. 4) Xchat – IRC program 5) Chromium – open source version of Google Chrome 6) VLC – Media program that’ll play anything 7) Cheese – Quick snapshots with the webcam, great for entertaining small children
Amarok – my favourite music player
9) Gedit – best GUI text editor
10) Nano – simplest command-line text editor
What do you use Xournal for? I’ve tried it a couple of times to annotate PDFs, but that’s it.
I use it all the time for making notes on my tablet pc. I can’t imagine it being particularly useful without a tablet though.
my most used apps are krusader and mc they are simply must have on a system. even though I use gnome now and I tend to mix gnome and kde apps, krusader is a must!
Easystroke mouse gestures with wmctrl Great for web browsing and managing windows.
Wow. This easystroke thing is excellent. I’m playing with it now.
This post shows some of the ways I use easystroke with wmctrl. http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8444754&postcount=5
The ones I always install are: * Dropbox – to synchronize my data * Meld – to compare text files * Deskbar – a practical text launcher * Eclipse – best IDE ever * Compact Menu 2 – extension to remove the menus in Firefox * Skype – some friends use only Skype * gsynaptics – to configure my touchpad * pulse audio equalizer – globally equalize audio * CompizConfig – I always change a few things
The ones I use the most (installed by default): Rhythmbox, Tomboy, Gedit, Baobab, gconf-editor, gnome-control-center, system monitor applet
I like abcde for ripping CDs.
great shot… I never knew gEdit can do soo much
… thanks !!!
Gwibber would be a hell of a lot better if it would stop crashing and showed tweets/dents within context of others that they may be replies of.
Lots of cool apps in comments. I found the selection in the podcast itself a bit lacking for some reason.
Anyway, my list (without the ones already being mentioned lots of times):
Gnome-Do / Kupfer – launchers and oh so much more Comix – for reading comics Exaile – everything I want from an audio player and not a thing more Nautilus Elementary – looks much better / cleaner than regular Nautilus. gThumb – newer builds have pretty much everything. Liferea – nice RSS reader, has Google Reader sync Emesene – if you ever meet a person that wants to try out Ubuntu / Linux and comes from Windows, forget about Pidgin and Empathy, Emesene is the way to go. Awesome application. Pino – simple twitter client. Flickr Uploader (Postr) – a pretty simple and straightforward interface for uploading pics to Flickr. Could be better, but I’m happy with it. Tucan – I’m not much of a pirate, but this program probably meets the needs of most people when it comes to share file hosting services.
And a special #11: If you’re on Ubuntu – mwbuttons :p
Man, I hated liferea
Comix is superb superbness. I use it a lot. Fullscreen mode is perfect.
What’s mwbuttons?
mwbuttons is a gui for moving buttons in lucid to the right side ;D
Comix is definitely one of the killer apps, I still haven’t found anything that comes even close to it, regardless of platform.
Also, another tool I forgot to mention, which is just incredibly useful, remastersys, I used it recently to customize a Lubuntu install for my friend’s old computer. I did everything in VirtualBox, made an ISO, and when I went over, I had the entire system up and running in 15 minutes, with all the codecs, apps and updates already on the ISO. Worked great, as promised.
Bah. I like the buttons on the left.
My best loved non-standard applications are:
dia – easily make very nice diagrams
jabref – very handy tool for organizing my literature lists. Ugly Java though
soundconverter – converts all sounds to different formats. loads of settings too
Dia?
Honestly?
I tried using it again yesterday in case it had got better. I still find it almost unusably horrid. Can’t give items text labels; can’t give lines text labels; can’t align things horizontally or vertically; confusing
Like any program, it takes some getting used to (remember your first Gimp experience?), but I must admit that Dia a bit fiddly to get the hang of in the first place. More fiddly than other programs. Once you know what you’re doing, it’s quick and easy. And the results are good looking, imho.
I like the fact that you can put text anywhere you want. So labeling lines etc. is quite easy, or do you mean something differently?
I forgot to mention the all singing and dancing newsgroup client sabnzbdplus. Deserves a prize for amount of consonants in a row.
Ah, I like a label for a thing to be part of that thing. My problem with separate floating text labels is that I tend to move stuff around a lot in diagrams; if I have to move all the labels separately as well then I feel like shooting myself.
Call me old fashioned, but I use pencil & paper before I start designing a diagram.
But I can see why you hate Dia, and I can imagine me trying to cut my ears off whenever that happened to me.
bah, 7 consonants in a row is nothing. Watch as I bust out the grep. 10 consonants in a row:
$ egrep -h ‘^Package: .[bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz]{10}.‘ /var/lib/apt/lists/*Packages | cut -c10- libmysqlcppconn-dev libmysqlcppconn-stlport-dev libmysqlcppconn-stlport4 libmysqlcppconn4
If you think that library packages ought not to count because they’re not applications, then with 9 consonants in a row I give you rsyncrypto and wncksyncdaemon
Roflol! libs is cheating though
In Dutch the y is never a consonant (me = Dutch), but according to wiki the y can be both consonant or vowel in English.
wncksyncdaemon looks like a comedy word, or 3X word value for Welsh Scrabble word
(Weekend starts early today
)
GParted. end of.
+1 for GPartEd – great tool.
Another mention for Emacs, but specifically org-mode, which I use for almost everything – writing, task, note taking and calendar related.
Git – use this a lot for writing stuff (in plain text) in addition to programming. I can keep history for all my things like task lists and easily recover from those “Oh **** I didn’t mean to delete that” moments. Also good for working on articles, where you can try out different ideas using branches and then merge stuff into the finished piece.
gPodder – podcatcher written in Python.
Parcellite – clipboard tool.
Dropbox – keep all my things like .emacs synced over different computers.
Ian.
I wonder why there are so few having VLC as a top 10 app – maybe I’m too old fashioned with all my DVD’s; VLC is a must have for me.
Love the recommendations. A lot of cool apps I’ve never used. I have to give a vote to VLC for just playing anything I throw at it. Dropbox is wonderful, like having my own ftp server to give links to big files by simply drag and drop and right click for the link. One app I didn’t see mentioned is OpenShot Video Editor. Full featured and easy to use. Great exporting options also. The one app any parent can’t do without is TimeKpr for controlling when and how long your kids stay on the computer – invaluable to say the least for facebook addicted kids.
pdftk – Great for extracting pages out of pdfs, rotating pdfs and sticking individual pdfs together.
PDF-XChange viewer – run under Wine. EXCELLENT for viewing (multiple tabs, great pinnable history & more), annotating and otherwise marking up pdfs. The free version wont extract pages. I havn’t found anything remotely close in native linux apps.
I have so many favorite Linux apps that it’s difficult to come up with a top ten list.
How about:
Vim, Screen, BitchX, NetBeans, Chromium, Pidgin, dd, Thunderbird, The Gimp, gEdit, jEdit, TVtime, VLC, mPlayer, Exaile, Songbird, OpenOffice.org, and many others.
Does for me; I hit F2 and it takes keyboard focus.
I must just be lucky. Perhaps it’s conflicting with Yakuake or something (I did try running them separately, mind you). Meh, Yakuake does the same thing and works for me for the moment. Might try Guake at home instead of yeahconsole.