Because I found his entry so useful, I’ve been meaning to follow Erik Dasque‘s lead and post a quick list of the applications I use on a regular basis. Some of them are obvious and mainstream, others are considerably less so. Here’s the list:
OS: Gentoo
I’ve covered this before, but I run Gentoo so that I can eke out every last bit of performance from my x23. Gentoo is a source based distro that gives you the option of compiling applications for your specific platform, leading to marginal performance gains. The catch? Compiling larger applications takes forever.
Desktop Environment: GNOME
Nothing against KDE, I just prefer Gnome.
Personal Information Management: Evolution
Essentially an Outlook equivalent for Linux, Evolution’s key feature for me is the Exchange connectivity, as that’s our current messaging platform. My biggest complaint is that it degrades very poorly in intermittent connectivity scenarios – tending to hang when I hop from one hotspot to another – as did past (but not current) versions of Outlook.
Office Productivity: Ximian Open Office
OOo in general is a very capable client – apart from the presentation application – and the Ximian-ized version is a nicely spiffed up look and feel.
Note Taking: Tomboy
Great little note taking app that I’ve written up numerous times before. Two interesting things: 1. I’m beginning to expand my use of the tool to new areas, and 2. I’m seeing opportunities for some Tomboy features in other application areas (like the category above).
Instant Messaging: Gaim
GAIM is a tremendous IM client. Supports tabbed windows, and all the IM protocols I use – AIM, Jabber, MSN, and Yahoo.
Browser: Firefox
This one’s a surprise, I’m sure 😉 Best browser available, IMO.
RSS Aggregator: Bloglines
Still wedded to Bloglines, but first Linux client to support its API will be my offline client of choice.
IRC: Chatzilla
Nice little Firefox extension that supports my basic IRC needs.
FTP: gFTP
Basic, but functional and gets the job done.
SSH: PuTTY
The old standby. Like atariboy, I wish it supported tabbed terminals.
Web Design: nVU
Just found that this, and I’m really quite liking it.
SMS: SMSSEND
Nice little command line tool for spamming my friends with endless SMSs of Simpsons quotes and the like 🙂
Music: XMMS
I’m primarily an iTunes guy, so I use a Win 2K box at the office for most of my music needs, but XMMS is a nice little WinAmp-like player for the odd audio file here or there.
Spam Killing: Nothing
Thus far I haven’t been able to successfully apply a filter to my Exchange account without massive performance degradation, so although Evolution provides this now I can’t use it.
