Ten Linux apps you must install
Unless you are operating in the enterprise class, most Linux software is free, which is both a blessing and a hindrance. Sure, there are some truly fantastic apps out there, but all to often you have to wade through a mess of buggy unfinished projects with dependencies on other defunct code to get to what you want. To help with …
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Re: Only 2: GParted and Libre Office
"Windows users survive without one..."
They don't survive as musch as they go from one near disaster after another...
Re: Only 2: GParted and Libre Office
"Normal people don't use Linux"
You're right. Intelligent people use Linux because they want to figure things out on their own so they can understand what they are doing and not be spoon fed by the man.
Re: Normal people don't use Linux
>>"It quite likely has new device variants requiring updated drivers which aren't available in existing distro releases."
This is because M$ has most of the hardware vendors by the short and curly's.
>From the horse's mouth - Linux doesn't support new hardware.
I'm not going to make any analogies on the other end of the horse...
>>"Of course, if you're too much of a muppet to realise any of this, you should stick to buying pre-installed kit."
>And insults.
Nope. That is a true and accurate statement. That's the difference between buying a new car or one that needs a little work to keep running. Most people don't want the challenge/reward of understanding the thing they are using.
>With the above, is it any wonder no one takes Linux seriously?
M$ FUD is why no one takes Linux seriously. Remember the troll that bought the Dell computer preloaded with Windows and then got U.S. National news attention because she could do her college course work? That was all a setup.
Re: Normal people don't use Linux
WARNING
WindblowZE troll sighted!!!
Re: ...as they go from one near disaster after another
You mean like those poor bastards that went from WindblowZE ME to WindblowZE Vistaster?????
Re: Only 2: GParted and Libre Office
> Try it. You might like it.
I think I'll just wait for a native CLOS subsystem.
Re: Normal people don't use Linux
You also have to consider where you will get support and how much extra that's going to cost you.
Exactly. Since your are obviously not able to do your own support.
Re: Normal people don't use Linux
"I've just wasted several days trying different versions of Ubuntu and Mint on a new netbook."
Hmm, after several days trying at least two different distros, against - how long was it you said you've been using Windows? Oh, you didn't. You know what they say, practice makes perfect. The difference in useability between Linux and Windows is centered almost solely in cost. Windows costs money, since MS has more or less forced most computer uses to learn their products. Linux costs the time it takes to learn to use it. It s true any OS. I've never like Mac's OS's either. They were saddled with the adjective "intuitive" by folks who never learned what the word means. There are no "intuitive" OS's or interfaces, just people who do or do not want to make the effort to learn.
Re: Only 2: GParted and Libre Office
"It'd be nice if normal people didn't need a 'Package Editor' as well. Windows users survive without one"
I think you mean "Windows users survive despite not having one". In Ubuntu, if you try to run a program that isn't installed, it tells you what you need to do to install it. (Now, if they'd just get rid of -dev packages and put the -dev files into the main package, they might achieve perfection .....)
Re: Normal people don't use Linux
"Exactly. Since your are obviously not able to do your own support."
Some people can't/don't want to, and these are the people that the uber-geeks of the F/OSS world always forget about. If you aren't 100% computer literate, you get attacked and insulted; just as we have seen on this forum.
If the uber-geeks ever want to know the reason for their ego-project never making it, they should try looking in the mirror.
Re: Normal people don't use Linux
Yeh, clearly the uber-geeks forced you to come here and start talking out of your arse about Linux after a whole two days worth of experience. If you'd stuck with it and accepted that it wasn't going to be the same as Windows and that you were going to have to learn things (as you do with any new OS), you'd have realised there are thousands of forums and wikis brimming with tutorials and friendly people willing to help. You don't need them if all you want to do is office work and browse the web but you probably will if you want to start modifying the system and have never used a Unix-like OS before.
The reason you're getting a hostile reaction here is because Linux users see this crap time and time again. Some guy who thinks he's quite good with computers after having used Windows all his life tries Linux for the first time. Then he realises he doesn't actually know a great deal about computers and that all his knowledge is specific to one proprietary OS. Then he gets mad and declares that every OS apart from Windows is broken and not user friendly.
Re: Normal people don't use Linux
>>With the above, is it any wonder no one takes Linux seriously?
>M$ FUD is why no one takes Linux seriously. Remember the troll that bought the Dell computer preloaded with Windows and then got U.S. National news attention because she could do her college course work? That was all a setup.
$h1t... I screwed the pooch on this one...
She got a Dell with *Linux* pre-installed...
http://www.wkow.com/Global/story.asp?S=9667184
or this more slanted article
http://www.inquisitr.com/15383/worlds-dumbest-woman-blames-ubuntu-for-college-failure/
Linux with windows? Weird
# sudo apt-get install kate
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
alsa-base alsa-utils app-install-data appmenu-qt aspell aspell-en consolekit dbus dbus-x11 defoma
.
.
.
x11-common x11-utils x11-xserver-utils xdg-utils xfonts-encodings xfonts-utils
0 upgraded, 244 newly installed, 0 to remove and 124 not upgraded.
Need to get 99.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 356 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.
Er, no thanks
Re: Linux with windows? Weird
Taking donations to buy a bigger hard disk for your Pentium MMX? I'll chip in.
Re: Linux with windows? Weird
>Taking donations to buy a bigger hard disk for your Pentium MMX? I'll chip in
What's a hard disk?
No, wait I'll google it. Ah, storage device for bloatware.
Kind offer but no thanks.
Re: Linux with windows? Weird @Chris W
"No, wait I'll google it. Ah, storage device for bloatware.
Kind offer but no thanks."
Weeeeeak ...
Re: Kate? Kate?
Good illustration of the perils of installing an app dependent on a windows manager other than the one you already have.
If you are not already using KDE, installing any KDE-based app will do exactly this - install vast buckets of dependencies that unecessariiy flll your disk space.
Not just a Linux problem
Just try to install a .net dependent program on Windows. You'll first need to hunt down and install the .net framework. Last time I checked (many years ago) that was 60 megs. 60 megs just to run a little piece of software.
Re: Linux with windows? Weird
Some packages have indeed weird dependencies. I usually avoid packages and build from source. However, your package list indicates a full X-server install. You weren't planning to run Kate from the CLI, were you ?
Re: Linux with windows? Weird
What on earth were you running this on!
For it to need to install x11-common, x11-utils, x11-server etc must mean that you are using a Linux distribution that DOES NOT PACKAGE A GUI! AFAIK, unless you are running a GUI which drives a framebuffer device directly, X11 MUST be installed on your system.
What is this, some crazy hair-shirt hand built system? Or maybe your package repository is corrupt. Is the Linux kernel listed in the redacted portion of the list? Maybe again, do you normally use apt-get to manage the packages on the system, because I suppose that if you were using Yum or something rpm-ish, the repository may not be populated with a correct list of installed packages.
Anyway, in this day and age, 99.7MB is actually a fairly trivial amount of space. Your average Microsoft Patch Tuesday will be larger than this. I would hazard a guess that this is a system with Gnome as the GUI, and much of what is being installed are the KDE packages that do not normally get installed on a Gnome system. But X11 should still be there!
Re: Not just a Linux problem
If you are shipping CD-ROMs to people who might not have a network connection, .NET 2 is around 235MB, because MS don't make it available to redistribute in any form except "blob that deploys everything on anything".
Conversely, if you are targetting Windows 8, Microsoft don't make it available *at all* and you *have* to have an internet connection to pull down the special Win8 version. So that's zero bytes on your CD-ROM but you have to ship a SIM to each customer.
So I think you Linux types have it easy.
Re: .NET
Years ago, I encountered a co-worker that obtained a used Win XP computer infected with .Net 1.0, .NET 2.0 and .Net3.0.
He had NO IDEA what all of that bloat was for. I suggested a nuke from orbit, and a re-install of ONLY that software he needed. The 80GB hard drive had less than 15Gb of free space before he started, once finished, free space rose to over 60GB. Oh, so much bloat, and cruft, oh so much faster system after he got through.
Re: Linux with windows? Weird @Antoinette Lacroix
>You weren't planning to run Kate from the CLI, were you ?
Obviously not and Kate was just an example, I could have used any of the "Apps you must install". The article should be titled "Linux GUI apps you must install". All my linux boxes are strictly command line only. I don't understand why anyone would want to use Linux and then try to make it look like windows. Only a blind, deaf and dumb Linux fanbois would argue that Linux GUI is even slightly superior to windows, hence title of comment, pay attention. There's a good example in another comment where someone says GIMP will do what they want so there's no need for photoshop. Sums it up perfectly, at the moment Linux GUI apps are good enough to get by but they cannot compete with the range and functionality of professional applications available for windows.
Re: Linux with windows? Weird @Peter Gathercole
>X11 MUST be installed on your system
Funny that, none of my Linux boxes have X11 installed and they all run perfectly even if I do say so myself.
See my previous comment.
>I would hazard a guess
Maybe instead of guessing you should try thinking for a while. No, forget that, thinking mught be too dangerous for you.
Only screenshot program?
I find that hard to believe that shutter is the only program for taking screen shots. Let's see what happens when I press print scree... Oh, look what is this? KSnapshot. I'm sure there are more.
BTW, I must *not* install any of those. I may, but I doubt if I will.
Re: Only screenshot program?
Gnome appears to honour print screen out the box too. And thats under my very stripped down gentoo build...
Re: Only screenshot program?
Windows has honoured print screen out of the box and a clipboard to paste the image into whatever application can handle images since..um..forever? I did wonder about that application. Are you really saying that there are versions of Linux out there with a GUI where you have to install an application in order to get a screen grab into your graphical editing application of choice? Shirley you jest!
Re: Only screenshot program?
Well my version of KDE has screen capture built in and indeed a clipboard that handles multiple entries and has done for years - all out of the box.
Re: Only screenshot program?
Print screen is one of the best supported functionalities in Linux. Now if we could get someone to write some actual applications it might get somewhere...
More consumer oriented apps
May I suggest that you look towards more consumer oriented apps, such as Exaile (Music manager / player), WINE (usually for games), Audacity (Audio editing), GIMP (Picture editor) and niche stuff like SweetHome3D (home layout and planning). Dropbox client is also worth a review.
Mostly no
Other than for someone that might need something like that I really wouldn't touch any of these.
Re: GIMP
This ^
While GIMP isn't quite Photoshop, it plenty good enough for the majority of photo work.
UFRaw to import / handle CR2 files into GIMP.
Re: GIMP
Per the GIMP FAQ: "For some industries, especially photography, 24-bit colour depths (8 bits per channel) are a real barrier to entry"
It's therefore explicitly not good enough for a lot of photographic work, per its own documentation. The good news is that the developers are fixing it, and I believe deserve credit for being upfront about the deficiency. If it were ordinary commercial software I'm sure the FAQ would disingenuously argue that nobody needs more than eight bits per channel.
"RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
Really? I think I saw a couple of RAR files in the late 80s or early 90s in MS/PC-DOS, but not since then. ZIP files, however, are endemic.
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
RARs are everywhere, particularly in the sticky-floored areas of the internet.
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
Popular? Not in either sense of the word. Why would anyone use RAR when ZIP is universally understood, already supported by your OS, free and just as good?
I've only ever had to deal with one. A quick surf of the internet suggested that there were no decoders from any source that looked *remotely* trustworthy, so I fired up a virtual machine, installed an OS, downloaded a (presumably) virus-ridden pile of poop, extracted the files and then threw the VM away.
You probably don't want to know what I thought of the person who sent me the archive.
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
Why is that? Why do pirates seem to prefer RAR?
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
"Why do pirates seem to prefer RAR"
(R)Arrrggghhhhh
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
> RARs are everywhere, particularly in the sticky-floored areas of the internet.
Or so you've heard?
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
"Why is that? Why do pirates seem to prefer RAR?"
I assumed it was a hold-over from the Usenet days where large files had to be broken down into smaller chunks so that they could be uploaded to newsgroups. RAR lets you split an archived file into standard sized chunks that can be reassembled at the other end whilst ZIP, as far as I know, does not. I don't know if RapidShare and the like have a limit on max file size but if they do it might explain why RAR is still so prevalent.
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
ZIP allows you to do that too and has done since the days of floppy drives
The biggest advantage of WinRAR is it's support of files bigger than what WinZIP will handle and slightly better (probably cause it works even with the evaluation version) command line utils
Re: "RAR extraction, an archiving option popular in the Windows world"
You say that zip is a supported format but I unboxed a new pc (lenovo q180) with windows7 professional preinstalled yesterday (it was cheaper than buying the no os option due to a deal... :/ ), and playing with it and opening a zip file I was shocked to discover that win7 *DOESNT* come with something that can handle .zip natively, and went on to suggest I give $39 to winzip for their program. Er.... No, Ive got a better solution to not much in the way of functionality out the box, and at the moment gnome is compiling on its fresh shiny new gentoo install...
I'd add...
Google Earth
A video editor - I mostly use kdenlive which supports 1080p/50
Thunderbird
Skype
UFRAW plugin for GIMP
Hugin for panorama creation
+2 I couldn't do without vncviewer for remote access and sshd/ssh/fish but they are likely built-in.
mplayer from the command line plays videos esp. 1080p/50 with the lowest cpu usage(~10% on my rather old dual-core AMD) although many other players support acceleration.
I used to use Thunderbird
Still have it installed, but I haven't read Usenet for ages and both personal and work email are on Google Apps.
Re: I used to use Thunderbird
I found it rather deficient, I might think better of it now but can find no reason not to use Claws Mail.
Apart from GParted, wouldn't install any of them.
No exactly thrilling stuff.
Re: Apart from GParted, wouldn't install any of them.
"No exactly thrilling stuff."
Linux people get into wars about text editors. Kind of makes your viewpoint subject to appraisal.
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