New Linux User

The Free World: My GNU/Linux Online Apps.

by Jon on February 17th, 2006

I’ve spent the better part of last year moving all of my day to day activities online. I’ve found that storing stuff like my email, RSS feeds, and documents on a single computer to be too limiting. I use three or four different computers on a daily basis and I like to have access to all of my stuff regardless of what computer I’m working on.

I didn’t really know it when I started this little project, but using online applications has had the added benefit of relieving me of the problem of finding suitable GNU/Linux applications to perform specific tasks. Don’t get me wrong, there is a plethora of really good GNU/Linux apps out there, but I want to be able to get at my data regardless of whether I am sitting at my Windows box at work or my GNU/Linux box at home. If I can get a standard interface to give me that access, all the better.

So what online applications am I using? Funny you should ask…

For email, I use the ubiquitous Gmail. I don’t think that there’s any surprise here. Everyone is using Gmail these days and it works just as well in Firefox as it does in Internet Explorer. Gmail itself isn’t perfect - the layout is ugly, the labelling system is unique but far from killer, and that stupid new Gchat window has permanently added itself to my sidebar even though I have no intention of ever using it - but the ability to search all my email since day one is absolutely wonderful.

I will say that I wish Gmail functioned better in Konqueror. I briefly had it working when I was running KDE 3.5 on Kanotix, but Konqueror would still terminate without warning and generally behave funky. The fact that I can’t use Gmail with Konqueror reliably is the number one reason why I don’t use Konqueror. Firing up another browser just to do Gmail is just like firing up an email application. Not what I’m looking for.

For documents I use Writely. I know that Openoffice.org is able to read and write MS Office files almost flawlessly, but that doesn’t solve the problem of access. Writely not only allows me to create and save MS Office and Openoffice.org files natively, but it also stores them for me online so I can get at them wherever I am.

I’d like to say that I’ve found a good blog client, but I really haven’t. Blog clients for GNU/Linux suck. Take it from me - I write on at least 3 blogs daily and I know a sucky blog client when I see it. The closest thing to a good blog client is the Performancing extension for Firefox. It’s not bad, but I can only use it on one of my blogs because the plugins I use on the other two aren’t usable through the extension. Still, Performancing doesn’t terminate on me or post ugly code to my blog, so in the bucket of blog clients for GNU/Linux (by virtue of Firefox), it’s the best I’ve seen so far.

My last application isn’t online, but I’m still going to include it here. The holy grail that I am still searching for is a good online news aggregator. Google has totally dropped the ball with that unusable mess they call Google Reader, Bloglines has an unsettling way of caching things which never makes me certain that I’m seeing the newest stuff, Bloxor was nice for a while but too heavy and slow in the end, and now I’m trying out the Whizz RSS Reader extension for Firefox. It’s funny how quickly Firefox became my main workhorse when I moved to GNU/Linux.

Whizz is looking promising (but they all do in the beginning). It allows me to drag n’ drop those little RSS buttons to the detachable feed list and is smart enough to recognize a feed with enclosures in it (hello, podcatcher) as well. My first few hours with it have been very fun. It still doesn’t solve the problem of access the same feeds at work and at home, but I’m working on that.

I hope that this entry may give some ideas to other GNU/Linux users. With today’s powerful AJAX web, sometimes the best local application isn’t a local application at all.

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