New Linux User

The Free World: My Killer Apps.

by Jon on December 12th, 2005

I was involved in a conversation today regarding applications for GNU/Linux. Whenever I talk about this subject, it becomes apparent to me that (once again) that there’s a misconception out there that there are no ‘Linux versions of Windows programs’. Well, I guess in most cases that’s technically correct, but in most cases there are certainly applications that will do the same job.

I made a comment once that GNU/Linux adoption will continue to suffer until such time as people stop buying operating systems and start buying computers. Think about cars: certainly we buy a brand, model, and colour of car but most of us don’t know or care about the brand of fuel injector, who made the wires, or what company made the mirrors. We just buy a car of the brand and colour we like.

Currently computer users are taught how to use Microsoft Word and how to use Microsoft Windows. Until we start teaching people how to word process and how to use a GUI, people will continue to buy Windows machines.

I guarantee you that a person who is proficient with any Microsoft Office product can be operating at 90% efficiency with Open Office in an hour. The last 10% may take a little longer if the user needs advanced features like mail merge and the like. The same can be said for many, many applications because applications are designed to perform tasks, aren’t they? Tasks don’t change from application to application, just the GUI presented to allow the user to perform those tasks.

Regardless of what operating system we’re talking about, I know that an audio editor will have some ability to record sounds, save them in some format, and perform some editing functions on the recorded sound stream. Same with office applications: I can be assured that any word processor I use will have some ability to open and close files, spell check, and do some fancy font stuff. I know these things because I know how to use audio editors and I know how to word process. Who provides these things to me isn’t important.

Until that abstraction occurs en masse, users will opt to stay with the devil they know for fear of ending up in a situation where they can’t perform their tasks.

Here’s a reasonably complete list of my killer apps that I couldn’t live without on my GNU/Linux box. It’s important to note that all of these applications either have a Windows or Mac version, or they provide the same functionality as applications available for Windows or Mac. There are many more applications that I use daily, but I’m going to spare us all the list containing tired old favourites like Open Office and Firefox. Oh, and all these applications are free as in beer and many are free as in speech. Just for fun, I wonder how much this list of applications would cost for a Windows or Mac machine?

Audacity

Audacity is pretty well known as the defacto audio editor for many platforms, not just GNU/Linux. I’ve been using it since May of 2005 and have had very few problems with it. It has some advanced features that I rarely take advantage of, but it does the stuff I need (like recording an hour long weekly podcast every week) very well.

EasyTAG

EasyTAG is an audio (MP3 and OGG for starters) tagger. A podcast without ID tags in it is a pretty annoying thing to a listener. I’m not sure what use an audio tagger is for people whom aren’t podcasting since most CD rippers will consult CDDB and online music comes with tags already in it, but I certainly couldn’t live without it.

amaroK

Arguably the best audio player out there, amaroK handles everything that you would expect out of an audio player and it launches in half the time Windows Media player does. You can even use it as a podcatcher, who knew?

FlickrUploadr

I put a lot of screen shots into my posts here and most of them are uploaded with FlickrUploadr. This is a handy little applet that allows me to just drag and drop images from my local machine onto it and blammo! They upload to my Flickr account. Way cool…

I’d like to be able to drag pics right off the web onto it, but we’re not there yet.

Skype

What can I say about Skype? Prior to getting involved in podcasting and blogging so heavily, I had little use for the voice capabilities of Skype and preferred to stay with a normal Instant Messaging client. However, now I talk to people all over the globe on an almost daily basis and Skype makes that really easy and really cheap.

The Gizmo project recently launched and has impressed a lot of people. I’m going to try it out, but given the wide spread adoption of Skype, I don’t see myself leaving it any time soon.

KSnapshot

Back to blogging. All of the screenshots that I use on this blog were taken by KSnapshot. This is a true picture of what an application should be. It does one thing and it does it really, really well. It’s simple interface and auto-incrementing naming function is really cool.

KMail

Before anyone cries foul, yes it’s true that I use GMail and I don’t POP it. But if I did use POP or IMAP mail, KMail would be the client I would use. I used it quite extensively until I decided to go to GMail. KMail has features that are so clever I would never think of them in a million years - but I used them.

For example - KMail is smart enough to know when you wanted to attach something to an email but forgot. Freaking brilliant!

So there you have it. My list of killer obscure apps that I couldn’t function without. I’d be interested in hearing what killer apps you’re running and how they work for you.

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POSTED IN: The Free World.