EasyLinuxGuide Blog

There has been a growing trend over the last few years of applications becoming less exclusive to the operating system. Now there is a myriad amount of applications from which to choose for users which is basically rendering the OS underneath almost a non-issue when considering the foundation. I have listed some of my favorite applications to use below and as you will see, a vast majority of them have been ported to other OS’s. I use Linux almost exclusively – let’s say 99.9% of the time to modest (the only exception is certain rare applications built specifically only for Windows which are very few and far between experiences for me). There have been some articles here and here on longtime Mac users switching to Linux in order to reap the benefits of the OS itself since the applications were cross platformers for the most part anyway. The other trend lately is hardware interoperability including being able to use different operating systems, mainly Mac and Windows, on the same machine. Linux has long had versions available for virtually not only any hardware configuration (PC or Mac style), but also for almost every architecture imaginable (ppc, i386-i686, athlon, x64, sparc etc) which is a solid credit to Linux and the adherence to the philosophy of allowing the user a choice. Let’s take a look at some applications and how cross platforming can make switching Operating Systems a far less arduous task than it has been in the past.

OpenOffice (Linux, Windows and Mac) – Openoffice is catching more popularity as it matures in various platforms. I’m seeing more people choosing Openoffice in Windows over MS Office not only because of the financial benefits but also because of the features included. At one time, there were some import issues between the two due to fonts and buttons being different but I am finding that Openoffice does an almost perfect job of keeping the same structure and look of any documents created in MS Office which almost exclusively pertained to word. There may still be some issues with fonts, but can be easily corrected by added the font with which the document was created to the machine you are using to view the file.

The Gimp (Linux, Windows and Mac) – This is a very extensive application that allows for photo editing, creation and applying all sorts of filters and effects. The Gimp is loaded with functionality and has been compared to Photoshop.

Nvu (Linux, Windows and Mac) – Through searching for a rich featured application that was similar to Dreamweaver, I came upon Nvu which is available for both Linux and Windows. This does lack some features that are a bit more intuitive in Dreamweaver (so I have been told) such as drag and dro flash code, but it does by and large create much nicer code and obviously the developers of Nvu appropriately recognize how important web compliance is at this time. There are options to check your page online with a validator which not only tells you how many errors it may contain but also exactly where they are in your code. I have used Nvu to build some basic pages and found it quite easy to use and i’ve also edited some prebuilt pages that were done in Dreamweaver and they were imported without any glitches and edited nicely. This really looks like a promising application and definitely is appealing when comparing the pricetag with Dreamweaver.

Thunderbird (Linux, Windows and Mac) – I wrote a previous blog article on why I had switched from Evolution to Thunderbird. In short, Thunderbird allows for some extra features that I really like and also does not include some of the features that I found I was not using in Evolution anyway. If you find having a full featured calendar useful and use groupware of syncing features, you may want to stick with Evolution which is a very nice application in its own right. I personally now find Thunderbird more suitable for my needs. Thunderbird offers some nice features such as theming, allowing for viewing RSS feeds within the same window as well the opportunity to use extensions such as reminders which take the place of a calendar without having to integrate a full featured function in order to do this. I previously had used Liferea which is a very nice application for viewing RSS feeds and I would still recommend this for anyone who needs a standalone application for this function.

Firefox (Linux, Windows, Mac) – Another staple application of multi platforms. Firefox seems to be more widely used than any other web browser for anyone in the know these days. The firefox team has to a small extent revolutionized the web browsing experiencing by offering tabbed browsing long before Microsoft was bothered to copy the option in IE 7 which is still not officially being used by default Windows users. Firefox also offers a plethora of extensions and themes which users have the pleasure of customizing which again illustrates the trend of making the application being used almost irrelevant to the OS underneath.

EasyTag (Linux, Windows and Mac) – Application used to rename audio files or edit tags. This application has single handedly saved me hours upon hours of sitting and renaming songs manually. All I can say is thanks!

EmelFM2 (Linux only) – A longstanding personal favorite for pane viewed file managers. The only negative thing I can say about this application is that sometimes with new versions there is a need to create an entirely new configuration file as well as the newer version abandoned some of the older icons that were much nicer in my opinion. I personally have built an Arch Linux package to include these icons in addition to the default ones which alleviates that preference for me.

Mplayer (Linux, Windows and Mac)- Mplayer has long been regarded as the king of media players in the Linux world. The best features of Mplayer are the option to use either a graphical front end or a command line version. Both are full of more than adequate features including subtitle controls, skin choices, on screen display and easy controls for either version. Mplayer also offers mencoder which allows for encoding of media files. One of my favorite things about Mplayer is running it from the command line and using the easy and intuitive controls such as spacebar for pause and the arrow keys to adjust the playing position.

Acidrip (Linux only) – written by Chris Phillips, this application is an excellent and straighforward method of ripping dvd’s. If does require a few other dependencies like lsdvd. The interface is intuitive and logical and works well. The only suggestion I would have would be to auto scroll the output box and also to create buttons for setting the filesize and filename as these changes do not take effect unless you highlight different areas – I watch the output box to see if the settings i’ve applied actually take effect.

Midnight Commander (Linux Only) – an ncurses based file manager. This has been around for ages and is a prime example of how something simple can be powerful. This is a multi featured application allowing common file manager functions as well as ftp access from within the application itself. This application lends itself very nicely to a command line driven system but also can be used within a more complete and full featured graphical desktop offering a nice balance between simplicity and usefulness.

MPD (Linux and Mac) and GMPC (Linux only) – this is a very unique method of music management. Music Player Daemon is run at the daemon level which allows it to run without any interaction from a graphical front end. There are many frontends to this daemon such as Glurp, Pympd and GMPC as well as others. I personally use the Gnome desktop and find that GMPC fits my needs very well. I also like how the newer version allows for plugins to be added such as a cover art function. GMPC also can minimize to the taskbar to allow control from a small input box as well. Other noteable features are drag and drop re-ordering of songs (now working again since the latest version, thankfully), crossfade, on screen notification of song changes. GMPC has become a staple application of mine for music playing.

Gnome Terminal – I had previously been using Eterm for a long time but since I had been using the Gnome desktop, I decided to give it’s default terminal a try. I found some really nice features including tabs and customizations which can be created using profiles. Gnome Terminal is now my default terminal.

Xchat (Linux, Windows and Mac) – This is my favorite application for using IRC. There is a Windows version available but it will cost you. All Linux versions are free.

Nautilus (Linux only – designed for the Gnome desktop) – The default file manager for Gnome. This is a typical file manager but also offers some really nice features like original and unique view options as well as the ability to insert scripts or write your own. This is particulary useful for a lot of plugins that are fairly straight forward. There are nautilus scripts for things such as resizing images without having to open an application and also converting audio files to different file formats all within the same directory.

In the end, although at first I was a little perturbed about the idea of sharing precious Linux only applications with other Operating Systems, ultimately it is a good idea for a few reasons. Linux is all about choice and this is another indication of Linux demonstrating allegiance to the tenet of allowing for user choice. Arguably, sometimes this is giving too much credit to the user but that is a concept I am OK with overall – let the user rise to the occasion and evolve, if not, no harm done. Also, once more people become more comfortable with the applications themselves (I’ve seen situations where I have introduced someone to using Linux and most of the relevant struggle was introducing them to the different application and explaining how they can do the things in this different application that they were previously doing in something different. The end result of almalgamating people to the same applications in different OS’s is that it can allow for something that has never been available before — allowing the user to choose an OS based specifically on the merits and downfalls of the OS itself. So, instead of explaining how to use these different sets of applications, more focus can be spent on explaining the differences in things such as file systems, package management (or lack thereof), security, ability to fend of viruses and spyware as well as the concept of ‘free’ which has a few different meanings like cost and free-thinking or free-use. These are far more valuable selling points to people in terms of evaluating different Operating Systems rather than having to endure an arduous and sometimes painful task of adapting to a new application and unfortunately letting the actual benefits of the OS itself become an afterthought until such time as the user becomes adept at these programs.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 8th, 2006 at 1:44 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.