satyajit.r
7th April 2009, 08:59 AM
I do a general search on Google for the best 10 applications for Linux. Most of the time I get a result of GIMP, Open Office and the usual ones. I do agree they are amazing applications and make switch to Linux very comfortable. But I wanted something more. I wanted applications and stuffs in Linux which were useful not essential but useful. So with a few methods of mine I came up with a couple of applications I find very useful. I would love it if you can add to this list.
Spicebird
Let me start with a mail client, Spicebird. Spicebird??? Where in the world does that come from. We are all familiar with Thunderbird so wats new with this. I do realize that the new version of Thunderbird, 3.0, is releasing soon. But the efforts Mozilla have put in Firefox goes much beyond to that they have put in Thunderbird. Spicebird is basically based on Thunderbird, Lightning and Telepathy and adds more functionality and integration among its components. It is still in the beta stage, but I do believe it is stable enough for personal use. You can straight away yum it in fedora 10 from the updates repository, other distributions you will have to look you will have to look here (http://www.spicebird.com/download).
So what is great about this one? First it has all the amazing features of Thunderbird like filtering your mail, tabs for mail, calendar and contacts. One thing I noticed was the perfect synchronization with Google calendar and it works both the ways. The next would be the ability to use it as a chat client. Have a look at all their screenshots (http://www.spicebird.com/category/image-galleries/spicebird-screenshots/spicebird-beta-07-screenshots).
Incollector
I'll just quote the website:
“Incollector is an application to collect various kinds of information (like notes, conversation logs, quotes, serial numbers, source code, web addresses, words). All the entries can be tagged, so you can find them very easily. There are also search folders which allows you to search for entries by specified criteria. You can also export (and import, of course) entries to an external file.”
All I can say is its brilliant. I do know Tomboy is being used for almost similar reasons but this makes it very easy to categorize stuffs. Tomboy is still a great application. The best part is you can categorize them using tags and organize them.
Empathy
Empathy is similar to Pidgin, with lesser plugins. But for them that use Gtalk for voice chat and are looking for Linux alternatives this is the one. There are still some bugs but it does make voice chat easy using Linux.
Okular
The gnome document viewer of Gnome does the job fine but that's it. It does not provide features beyond. Okular is the default document viewer in KDE 4. It supports pdf files and chm files which lacks in evince. The features include adding notes, highlighting, reviewing and a lot more. As the web site (http://okular.kde.org/) says okular is more than a reader.
Agave
Finding a color that matches another is a pain in general and if you are artistically challenged further more. Agave allows you to generate a variety of color schemes from a single starting color. Its just absolutely brilliant. Have a look at the screenshots (http://home.gna.org/colorscheme/screenshots.shtml) on their home page. This application has saved me a lot of time.
Komodo Edit
The web site says it is a free, open source editor but I would say its more than an editor. It has features of auto-completion of code, syntax checking, syntax coloring, vi emulation and supports languages like Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl, plus JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and XML, and template languages like RHTML, Template-Toolkit, HTML-Smarty and Django. It is built on the mozilla tool kit and has the firefox-style extensibility. If you are a programmer and looking for a good editor take a look at their website (http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/).
All of these applications are in the main repository of fedora but for Komodo Edit. So you can straight away yum it. I would like to know more about applications such as these. So please do add applications which you think are amazing.
Spicebird
Let me start with a mail client, Spicebird. Spicebird??? Where in the world does that come from. We are all familiar with Thunderbird so wats new with this. I do realize that the new version of Thunderbird, 3.0, is releasing soon. But the efforts Mozilla have put in Firefox goes much beyond to that they have put in Thunderbird. Spicebird is basically based on Thunderbird, Lightning and Telepathy and adds more functionality and integration among its components. It is still in the beta stage, but I do believe it is stable enough for personal use. You can straight away yum it in fedora 10 from the updates repository, other distributions you will have to look you will have to look here (http://www.spicebird.com/download).
So what is great about this one? First it has all the amazing features of Thunderbird like filtering your mail, tabs for mail, calendar and contacts. One thing I noticed was the perfect synchronization with Google calendar and it works both the ways. The next would be the ability to use it as a chat client. Have a look at all their screenshots (http://www.spicebird.com/category/image-galleries/spicebird-screenshots/spicebird-beta-07-screenshots).
Incollector
I'll just quote the website:
“Incollector is an application to collect various kinds of information (like notes, conversation logs, quotes, serial numbers, source code, web addresses, words). All the entries can be tagged, so you can find them very easily. There are also search folders which allows you to search for entries by specified criteria. You can also export (and import, of course) entries to an external file.”
All I can say is its brilliant. I do know Tomboy is being used for almost similar reasons but this makes it very easy to categorize stuffs. Tomboy is still a great application. The best part is you can categorize them using tags and organize them.
Empathy
Empathy is similar to Pidgin, with lesser plugins. But for them that use Gtalk for voice chat and are looking for Linux alternatives this is the one. There are still some bugs but it does make voice chat easy using Linux.
Okular
The gnome document viewer of Gnome does the job fine but that's it. It does not provide features beyond. Okular is the default document viewer in KDE 4. It supports pdf files and chm files which lacks in evince. The features include adding notes, highlighting, reviewing and a lot more. As the web site (http://okular.kde.org/) says okular is more than a reader.
Agave
Finding a color that matches another is a pain in general and if you are artistically challenged further more. Agave allows you to generate a variety of color schemes from a single starting color. Its just absolutely brilliant. Have a look at the screenshots (http://home.gna.org/colorscheme/screenshots.shtml) on their home page. This application has saved me a lot of time.
Komodo Edit
The web site says it is a free, open source editor but I would say its more than an editor. It has features of auto-completion of code, syntax checking, syntax coloring, vi emulation and supports languages like Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl, plus JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and XML, and template languages like RHTML, Template-Toolkit, HTML-Smarty and Django. It is built on the mozilla tool kit and has the firefox-style extensibility. If you are a programmer and looking for a good editor take a look at their website (http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/).
All of these applications are in the main repository of fedora but for Komodo Edit. So you can straight away yum it. I would like to know more about applications such as these. So please do add applications which you think are amazing.
