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Amazing applications that others may not be aware of

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AgenT
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Amazing applications that others may not be aware of

#1 Post by AgenT »

List the applications that you think are amazing, yet which many may not be aware of. Share your applications with others and find out new amazing ways to do things in GNU/Linux.

Simple rules:
  • - No commonly used applications such as Inkscape, OpenOffice, Icedove, pre-installed KDE or pre-installed GNOME applications.
    - Applications must be in the official repositories.
    - Must include at least a short description of what the application does.
My List:
agave: Creates color schemes. Great for designing websites. Just select one color and have agave create a color scheme for you.

tvtime: Application to watch TV or other devices connected to the computer. Very TV like.

rxvt-unicode: An amazing terminal emulator that is very fast. Startup time as well as redraw time are much faster than the bulky KDE and GNOME terminal emulators. Very good support for encodings as well.

KMplayer:This is NOT KDE's version of Mplayer (that is KPlayer). KMPlayer uses many different backends, including xine and mplayer, to play media. Big feature is the nice intergration with Konqueror for imbedded media.

apt-listbugsLists bugs of packages in the Debian repositories. Useful to check for bugs of a package before installing or upgrading.

gLabels: Create nice lables for envelopes, CD/DVD media, etc.

w3m: Browse the web from the command line.

krename: Powerful program that helps in renaming a batch of files and folders.

rename: Similar to krename, but without the GUI and a little less powerful. Already installed on your system.

renameutils: A set of programs to help in renaming files and folders. Like rename, but more powerful and versatile.

GNU screen: Allows you to have multiple terminal windows open in one terminal emulator. Allows for attaching and detaching of terminal windows and even accessing the windows across the network.

rsnapshot: Backup utility using a diff type method.

nmap: Advanced utility for networking sniffing. Great for auditing security and for simple things, like finding out what computers are on a network, what ports are open and what IP addresses are taken.

vrms: Checks your installed package list for non-free applications! Great way to see how many non-free applications are installed and which ones they are. Thank you Richard Stallman and the person who created this application.

What amazing applications do you know of? LIST YOUR APPLICATIONS!
Last edited by AgenT on 2007-03-16 22:21, edited 1 time in total.

thamarok

#2 Post by thamarok »

A nice list, but:
- Applications must be in the official repositories.
What do xdtv, devede, avidemux do there?

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AgenT
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#3 Post by AgenT »

thamarok wrote:A nice list, but:
- Applications must be in the official repositories.
What do xdtv, devede, avidemux do there?
Good question! I forgot that I have the Marillat repository enabled. :oops: FIXED

Do you have any applications that you would like to share with the rest of us?

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Fluenza
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#4 Post by Fluenza »

This may be somewhat off-topic, but it's close enough that it may qualify as an amazing application that may or may not be in the Debian repositories, but I definitely don't know about it. I'm looking for anything that allows a person to edit video in Etch. I'm dealing primarily with .wmv, .asf, .mpg, and .avi type formats. Suggestions, anyone?

Anyone know of an amazing app that can do that? In the Debian repositories?
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Pobega
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#5 Post by Pobega »

bsdgames - All awesome text based games, which are very fun when X dies or when you just need to kill twenty minutes.

Galeon web browser - Not completely unknown, but pretty rarely talked about in comparison to it's other GNOME brother (Epiphany). Galeon gives the user pretty strong control over their browser and how it is set up, even moreso than Konqueror. It's based on the Mozilla engine which, from what I understand, is faster and more preferred than KHTML.

ddclient - Useful tool to update your ip on dyndns.org's domain name server, very useful for hosting a web server on a dynamic IP.

Leafpad - Very lightweight text editor, good for minor edits.

scrot - Best screenshot program ever. No questions asked.

unrar-free - Very good, completely free program to uncompressing rar archives. Doesn't work on all archives, but works enough to be able to avoid non-free licenses.

xmms2 - Yet another audio player, what sets xmms2 apart from the competition is that it runs in the background. Even if you log out/kill X xmms2 keeps playing your music. And because it is not a graphical application, you can use hotkeys from within your window manager to control it. This is one program I couldn't live without.
Last edited by Pobega on 2007-03-17 03:30, edited 1 time in total.

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rickh
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#6 Post by rickh »

mp3report - Terminal app that creates a formattable HTML file of all your MP3s. I use it to make of list of my mp3s to import to a spreadsheet.

From the man page:
DESCRIPTION: A customizable program to scan a list of (sub)directories, creating a report from an HTML template. Also calculates various statistics and each song's playing time. Supports ID3 and ID3v2 tags. Should work on any perl-ized OS; see homepage for demo - http://mp3report.sourceforge.net

For other lesser known but superb programs see the Debian Package of the Day website.
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ghostdawg
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#7 Post by ghostdawg »

Etherape - is a graphical network monitor.

Featuring link layer, ip and TCP modes, it displays network activity graphically. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. Color coded protocols display.

It supports Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, PPP and SLIP devices. It can filter traffic to be shown, and can read traffic from a file as well as live from the network.


http://etherape.sourceforge.net/
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AgenT
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#8 Post by AgenT »

ghostdawg wrote:Etherape - is a graphical network monitor.

Featuring link layer, ip and TCP modes, it displays network activity graphically. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. Color coded protocols display.

It supports Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, PPP and SLIP devices. It can filter traffic to be shown, and can read traffic from a file as well as live from the network.


http://etherape.sourceforge.net/
Wow. That is one nice application. Thank you for sharing.

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AgenT
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#9 Post by AgenT »

I have another application:

Qalculate: Very impressive calculator that can convert anything to anything else (within reason). It can even convert light. The currency converter (exchange rates downloaded from the Internet) is a nice touch! And it has the very useful features of syntax for conversion: just type "100 kg to miles" or "100 euro to yen" and get the answer!

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#10 Post by Grifter »

sl: will teach you patience and not to misspell `ls'

texmaker: a nice qt4 latex editor

autossh: will re-establish ssh connections (or tunnels) if disconnected

convmv: like iconv but for files and dirs, (changes encodings)

zgv: console image viewer using fb or svgalib

debian-goodies: useful and practical

cwcp: curses frontend for unixcw; learn morsecode!

yafc: powerful ftp client

celestia: awesome opengl planetarium software

links2: your favourite console browser, but with graphics support using either fb or svgalib

weechat: wonderful unicode terminal irc client[/code]
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rickh
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#11 Post by rickh »

Whoa! I installed celestia, and started messing around trying to figure out how it worked. It ate my machine alive ... Had to switch to a terminal to kill it. I'll try again, more cautiously, when I don't have a lot of other sessions going.
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Pobega
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#12 Post by Pobega »

Grifter wrote:links2: your favourite console browser, but with graphics support using either fb or svgalib
Thanks for the tip on this one, finally I found a nice light browser to replace Galeon with.

Links2 may not be the most functional browser, but I'm a sap for pulling the most power I can out of my system (And on top of that my laptop is top-quality, so you can imagine just how fast I move since I run only light apps :wink:

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#13 Post by Grifter »

Absolutely, links2 has x11 driver too; links2 -g (if you're in X it will default to that driver, otherwise use -driver), perfect for reading forums with (:

rickh - I'm not sure what the problem was so I can't really offer any help, possibly some problem with the GL?
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#14 Post by Pobega »

Grifter wrote:Absolutely, links2 has x11 driver too; links2 -g (if you're in X it will default to that driver, otherwise use -driver), perfect for reading forums with (:
Actually, that's exactly what I was talking about. I'm using "links2 -g" in Window Maker, the only program I need to find a nice alternative for now is Gaim; I don't like 2.0, and eventually 1.5 will become unusable (Microsoft and AOL's ever changing protocols will eventually kill 1.5*)

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#15 Post by AgenT »

debian-goodies is a nice find! yafc sounds interesting and I have never heard of it. lftp yes, but not yafc. Thank you for sharing. I forgot about links2. It is usually better than w3m and the -g option is very nice and useful. I used it all the time years ago in framebuffer.

A few other additions:
centericq Terminal multi-protocol instant messaging client. Not just for ICQ!

debian-history: Read the history of Debian right on your computer.

debian-policy: Contains: Debian Policy Manual, Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), Policy checklist for upgrading your packages and more.

debootstrap: Used to create a Debian base system from scratch, without requiring the availability of dpkg or apt. No need for CDs, floppies, or any other media. Just a hard drive and network access.

debescan: A tool to generate a list of vulnerabilities which affect a particular Debian installation.

checkinstall: Use it install of "make install" to install compiled from source binaries AND create a deb package which can then be used to add/remove the installation. So instead of "./configure;make;make install" you use "./configure;make;checkinstall". SEE NOTE AT BOTTOM.

alien: Convert LSB, Red Hat, Stampede and Slackware Packages into Debian packages. Not the best method for installing software, and should not really be used unless in dire circumstances.

Does anyone know the difference between debootstrap and cdebootstrap?

Why is checkinstall available in stable and unstable but NOT in testing?

thamarok

#16 Post by thamarok »

rezound - ReZound is a great audio file editor for Linux which supports JACK, Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, WAV and FLAC. It uses the xlibs for its GUI and has many many effects which makes it alot better than audacity (ReZound also supports LADSPA effects).

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#17 Post by rickh »

Why is checkinstall available in stable and unstable but NOT in testing?
At one time checkinstall was completely pulled from Debian repos for general bugginess and lack of mainenance. At that point, it was already in Sarge, so, of course it stayed.

Since then, the developers have evidently cooperated enough to get it back into Sid, but it will probably never get beyond that. In The Debian System, Martin Krafft explains clearly why it should never be used by serious Debian users.

In a nutshell, the packages it creates have no mechanism for following Debian protocols related to program installation.
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#18 Post by AgenT »

rickh wrote:
Why is checkinstall available in stable and unstable but NOT in testing?
At one time checkinstall was completely pulled from Debian repos for general bugginess and lack of mainenance. At that point, it was already in Sarge, so, of course it stayed.

Since then, the developers have evidently cooperated enough to get it back into Sid, but it will probably never get beyond that. In The Debian System, Martin Krafft explains clearly why it should never be used by serious Debian users.

In a nutshell, the packages it creates have no mechanism for following Debian protocols related to program installation.
Thank you for the Debian System reference. I will make sure to read it! Martin Krafft's book is just amazing.

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AgenT
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#19 Post by AgenT »

A few more:

Tunapie: Listen to online radio and watch online TV. A GUI based program for displaying Shoutcast or Icecast video and radio streams. Streams can then be played using an appropriate media player, defined in preferences. Tunapie also allows streams to be recorded using streamripper. Recordings can be set to start and stop at specified times.

Kompare: Kompare is a graphical user interface for viewing the differences between files. It can compare two documents, create a diff file, display a diff file and/or blend a diff file back into the original documents.

Kbabel: This is a suite of programs for editing gettext message files (PO-files). It is designed to help you translate fast and consistently.

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#20 Post by DeanLinkous »

hmmm.....

speedometer
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/speedometer
Monitor network traffic or speed/progress of a file transfer. The program can be used for cases like: how long it will take for my 38MB transfer to finish, how quickly is another transfer going, How fast is the upstream on this ADSL line and how fast can I write data to my filesystem.

zoneminder
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/zoneminder
ZoneMinder is intended for use in single or multi-camera video security applications, including commercial or home CCTV, theft prevention and child or family member or home monitoring and other care scenarios. It supports capture, analysis, recording, and monitoring of video data coming from one or more video or network cameras attached to a Linux system. ZoneMinder also support web and semi-automatic control of Pan/Tilt/Zoom cameras using a variety of protocols. It is suitable for use as a home video security system and for commercial or professional video security and surveillance. It can also be integrated into a home automation system via X.10 or other protocols.

linuxdcpp
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/linuxdcpp
This package provides the linux port of the famous windows client dc++ for the P2P network Direct Connect.
This project uses the core dc++ with a rewritten GTK user interface, so most of all the killer features of dc++ are in it!
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