Apps for your Linux Machine

Testing newly released operating systems gives me pleasure and thus I am jumping to many of the OSs right from the day I have got my new laptop. I started the year 2011 with ubuntu 10.10 and windows vista as the dual boot. Soon I jumped to windows 7 and after the release of Natty Narwhal, I switched to it keeping the windows 7 with me. During my summer vacation I installed Opensuse 11.4. whatever Linux distribution I may install I always kept windows with me. But this September I made up my mind to keep the windows out of my box for always and my machine had only ubuntu. After the release of Oneiric Ocelot, I upgraded to it. I have virtual box but windows has no place in it also. Arch linux has got that throne to rule the virtual box's world.

I have installed a plethora of apps in ubuntu and tested them. I am posting my experience so that you may get some help in choosing the best app for the particular job.

I have chromium, chrome, opera, firefox and conqueror installed to crunch my browsing desires. I mostly use google chrome for browsing purpose. Chrome and chromium work similar since they have got the same soul with different body. Chromium is the open source project of google for its browser. I think chrome is best for browsing however opera also works nice. I use mozilla firefox for downloading the stuffs. The reason behind using the firefox is the presence of 'downthemall' a firefox add-on which accelerates the downloading speed by 400%.

I am doing a lot of chatting for last few weeks. My earlier weapon for chatting was empathy. It has nice look, support almost all popular protocols and has nice theme. Last week I shifted to pidgin and I'm in love with it. The power of pidgin lies on its plugins. Its buddy pounces and ability to add custom smileys out of your image, rocks! I welcome my friends over chat by hitting them with my smiley made of my own image. I have 'Kopete' also but I never use it. For irc, Xchat IRC works great for me and I think it is best in its category. With ubuntu 11.10, I have got Thunderbird as my default email client which is really good move by cannonical. I like it more than the Evolution. But Evolution have got the calender with it which makes it to compete with Thunderbird. But don't worry if you love Thunderbird, just install the Sunbird plugin for it using Ubuntu Software Center.

For watching videos, playing songs and other media playback, VLC works great for me. It opens up to play media much faster than banshee media player. VLC can play almost anything you throw in it. Banshee sometimes hangs but never the vlc. I have 'gmusicbrowser' also but I have used it rarely. Similarly I rarely throw a look at totem and parole. For video editing 'Pitivi' is best out there. For handling the plethora of photographs which I have clicked; 'Picasa' is there to help me.

Like applications I teated most of the prominent desktop environment available for linux based operating system. I started with unity which was the default one. Then I gave a shot to Kde. It was eye catching but it kept my machine's fan running always. Most of the time I found the cpu uses more than 60% which used to jump over 90% in case of running any application. Gnome looked nice for me however, many find gnome 3.2 a crap including the Linux creator, Linus Torvald. Only irritating thing I found in it is the absence of minimize and maximize button however I liked it at all its corners. I also tested xfce, lxde and enlightenment 17. I was amazed by the look and feel of enlightenment 17. It is light on resources but great on look. I found lxde better than xfce. I will suggest you to go for lxde, if you want less resource hog and better interface both. You decide yourself for the best apt environment for your linux machine.

Similarly I have got extremely large number of apps of other purposes and I think to discuss them all is not a healthy choice so I am telling the best working app( at least they work best for me)

email client                                              Thunderbird

web browser                                             google chrome & mozilla firefox

office application                                     LibreOffice

clipboard manager                                    Glipper

screenshot app                                           Shutter

searching app                                            Gnome Do

photos manager                                         Picasa

offline dictionary                                      Artha

internet messenger                                    Pidgin

Tex file editor                                            Kile

media player                                               vlc

text editor                                                   emacs, vim, gedit

irc client                                                     xchat

IDE                                                             Eclipse, Qt creator

Terminal emulator                                      yakuake

virtual machine                                           virtual box

Image editor                                                Gimp

2D modeling app                                         Blender

Audio editor                                                 Audacity

video editor                                                  Pitivi

File sharing                                                  LinuxDC++ ( a DC++ port for linux)

Nerwork protocol analyser                          Wireshark, traceroute

Python web framework                                Django

typing tutor                                                   tux typing

File searching                                               CatfFish

compression tool                                          Archive manager, 7zip

calculator                                                      Gcalculator

virus scanner                                                ClamTk ( amazed !!!!)

JRE                                                               OpenJdk

ebook library management                          calibre

chm reader                                                    xCHM

sniffer                                                           ettercap

Download manager                                      kGet

Internet Telephony                                       Skype

other apps : window manager tweaks, CompzConfig setting manager, ubuntu restricted extras.

If you are among those who don't fascinated by the 'ease of use' provided by the operating system or the desktop environment but look for the power and terminal is your best friend then I will suggest you to go for the Arch Linux. I assure you that you will get enough knowledge and insight of Linux from the first meet with it.

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