I started testing somethings on my laptop again (since I have Linux working great on it now). Anyway, the distro I’m using gave me pretty much everything I need and recognizes almost all of my hardware (everything but my wireless network PCMIA or whatever card), but I was wondering if there are useful apps that you like on Linux. On Windows I already know what I like/want/need, but it has been awhile since I’ve used Linux and I’m don’t remember it all. Anyway, what are some of the apps you guys like to have on Linux.
GAIM, Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird, and mutt is the ULTIMATE e-mail client!
XMMS for music
xine or mplayer for video
GIMP for graphics editing
xchat for IRC
pydance for a little DDR simulation 
Cool, so far I have most of this stuff. I don’t have mutt, firefox, thunderbird, or pydance. Thanks guys. Anymore?
Maybe I’ll post a screenshot of my working Linux later. This is so far the best Linux setup I’ve ever had. My laptop does everything it did with Windows except play wmvs (probably wmas too) and use the volume buttons (but this is easily fixable by having volume control on the taskbar and I’ve ahd this problem with my old laptop with Windows).
When we go partying Kero I’ll have to show you.
Although most of the applications have been posted already, here are my favourites:
- X-Chat for IRC
- GAIM for Instant Messaging (it can handle almost everything widely used, including Jabber, but I use it only for AIM, ICQ and MSN)
- Mozilla Firefox for Browsing
- Mozilla Thunderbird as E-Mail-Client
- Totem for movies and music
- KWrite as my text editor
- OpenOffice for things like Calculation and stuff
- Gnome for graphics
- Konquerer
Yeah, that is pretty much what I use on Linux.
Kino is really fun to mess around with for video editing. I like that. There was also this really awesome AI sim that came with Debian, you could talk to it and teach it things and it would get progressively smarter. I think it was called HAL3000.
[ul]
[li]OpenBox + Xfce4 Toolbar or Enlightenment + Engage: Window Manager.
[/li][li]XMMS: Music.
[/li][li]Mplayer: Video and WMA.
[/li][li]Gaim: IM.
[/li][li]GkrellM: System monitoring and Volume control.
[/li][li]Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird: Web and Email.
[/li][li]XChat: IRC.
[/li][li]OpenOffice: Documents.
[/li][li]Eterm: Terminal.
[/li][li]Gimp: Image editing.
[/li][/ul]
Uhm, why not just use a calculator program like xcalc, and use openoffice for the things it was designed to do?
I’m curious as to why you don’t use Stepmania for PC DDRing. I’m going to buy an adapter and a cheap pad pretty soon. I have some neat stuff >.>
lets not forget nethack for general purpose awesomeness
With “Calculating”, I actually meant spreadsheet. For calculation, I use KCalc.
Are there any programming environments available for Linux or Mac systems? I’m programming in Java now and I use JCreator on my Windows desktop, but in the future, I plan to get a laptop for programming away from home. I’ll either get a Mac laptop or build one and install Linux on it.
That’s like asking if MS makes programs for Windows. There is a shitload of programming stuff for Linux, hell, you compile your programs (although I still haven’t figured this out and am restricted to RPMs at the moment). If you get a laptop and install Linux on it, don’t get a Mac one. Installing Linux on a laptop is already mroe difficult than a desktop since it has more proprietary hardware that isn’t always supported or you’ll run into other problems and a Mac one would just magnify those problems. Like some of the older distrobutions that I ran on my desktops just fine froze mid-installation on my laptop. My laptop works great now with Linux, but that is after a lot of tinkering, help (thank you Kero), reading, and trying various distrobutions.
All platforms support Java, and both OSX and Linux support more and better programming environments than Windows.
When I started PC DDRing, Stepmania was still in its infancy and didn’t have a Linux version yet. I’ll probably start using it someday, since pydance isn’t being improved or anything. And doesn’t Stepmania support animated videos?
Yea, but i had a little trouble getting it to work with my video card, but then again, i didn’t get it as a binary, i tried to compile it.
And, heh, i didn’t know anyone used PyDance. Is it good? It kind of seems like a bad port of DelightDelightReduplication to me.
Pydance would be great except for one big flaw: its video sync jumps a lot, if you have any other programs running. Very sucky for those songs with dense steps. Other than that, the only thing it’s missing is video support and no included announcer sounds – it might support external ones, but I’ve never played with it.