Readers’ Choice: Awesome Linux Apps that Need Our Attention
- Image by 176 via Flickr
I got some very interesting comments on my post about Linux projects that need more attention, so I decided to feature a few of the readers’ recommendations. They have mentioned very interesting and useful applications, some of which I have never heard of. A warning though: this is a very mixed bunch, some of the apps are just little tools while others are heavy-duty software projects.
Have fun reading, maybe you will find some new and interesting software!
fsniper is a cool app that monitors a certain directory for changes. You can then tell fsniper to run a script when a certain file name or file type is changed.
“Common uses include making a single drop directory for all things from a webbrowser etc, and having semi-intelligent scripts figure
out what to do with those files. You write the scripts yourself.”
Coccinella is a “communication and collaboration tool” with a whiteboard. Many people might just yawn and say it is just another Pidgin competitor, since it features multi-protocol messaging, but I suggest you try it out first and then decide whether you should throw it into the same basket.
Cairo Dock is a cool alternatice to AWN or Gnome Do’s Docky. It is basically a launcher bar with plug-in and compositing support. Read more about it in this article I wrote last year.
KDE and KOffice are evolving at a steady pace, so it is about time we mention Kexi, the alternative to Ooo’s Database tool and Microsoft Access et al. An excellent and intuitive interface, python support plus Kugar, the report generator are only two of a number of great features.
Gscrot / Shutter
Scrot is cool, so why not have an interface 
Do you follow many RSS feeds? I am subscribed to a ton of feeds. I spend 30 minutes a day reading through my daily dose of Linux and I need a good RSS feed reader. Liferea does the job well, is stable, and looks good (the layout reminds me of an e-mail client).
Gobby, the collaborative text editor
Apps that enable you to collaborate with people through an internet connections are extremely important for Linux. With Gobby, you can collaborate using a text editor. Gobby even features Sobby, an extension which helps you make your own collaboration server. Also, there is a chat window if you want to talk to your co-worker(s).
“Gobby is fully Unicode-aware, provides syntax highlighting for most programming languages and has basic Zeroconf support.”
These are all the applications mentioned by the readers that I’ve found worth writing about. I may do another article like this in the future, so if you liked it, suggest an app!
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[...] Linux apps that need our attention… [...]
As far as I know, Gobby is also used as the collaborative component in Abiword, enabling you to work simultaneously, collaboratively on an Abiword document using the XMPP (Jabber) protocol.
Nice list, although not so unknown to me. Didn’t know about fsniper though and sounds very interesting. I’m pretty sure I had the need for something like that in the past.
Good list.
About Liferea, it is still my preferred feed reader, but the latest versions are a mess. It occupies 100% CPU while doing nothing, and sometimes crashes. It takes forever (sometimes minutes) to start with about 100 feeds.
I hope the coders correct those errors, because otherwise it is a very good software.
If you need a great RSS feed reader, you should try the amazing Saleena!
https://fedorahosted.org/releases/s/a/saleena/saleena_0.1-1_i386.deb
No humility allowed.
Gscrot??? Worst name ever!
Doesn’t seem so ‘amazing’ to me. For one, I can’t even find their homepage (and the Saleena trac page is the generic one).
Which is understandable as it seems to be at a 0.1 release. But please don’t spam as it being amazing
@jeremy1701: gee, thanks braniac. maybe that’s why it’s not being used anymore.
Gscrot is bad but FLOSS has a long distinguished list of idiotic names like Gimp, the cripppled Photochop or Jokosher, which allows religious fanatics to enjoy their food virtually.
What we need is less navel gazing like docking bars and more useful programs that Gnu-Linux is still missing like a simple editing software like Imovie or Windows program I cant remember now to edit home videos.
I said simple, not optionless.
Mom and pop want to take their digital camera on a trip and take the pictures and video clips, maybe crop the ends of the clips, put them together with transition/effects, maybe add a soundtrack to it and maybe some text. I know KDEnlive and all the others and nothing just works and nothing is simple.
We need to have more easy modes for software so the 5-10 most used functions can be accessed by people with little experience in the LEAST amount of steps possible and for those taht want more, the rest of the software is still there with all its power.
@Rober: Ok, a video editing program (one thing that Linux does lack, but imho stuff like Pitivi is working on fixing).
What else though?
We have browsers, IM, skype, word processors, music players… what else is missing for the common user?
Linux needs a good working version of:
a) gnucash, with invoicing, shippers, double-ledgers,etc…
b) gEDA, needs a lot of help especially gScheme
c) something CAD, that can read/write/create autocad files and use autocad libraries
d) gimp, spend days trying to figure it out, too tough to remember. Too many widgets that don’t seem to do anything till you’ve screwed it up, features that interfere with other features, etc…
Linux has too many duplicate office suites and other halfway-ware. Why not focus on one and complete it? Open Office is pretty good now, why not spend more energy on it?
Linux has too many players and few that actually work.
@yonnie
I was talking to a friend about CAD apps on Linux and by doing a Google search I found a lot of commercial apps available. Are they bad?
yonnie: It’s OSS’s greatest strength, as well as its greatest weakness. Developers fork constantly and start new projects so they can have the software that has the feature set they want.
It’s a good thing, since all needs are eventually covered, and it allows innovation to flourish. Cool features that work from the forks are eventually integrated into the main branch.
However, this also means a lot of “Reinventing the Wheel” is done and many resources are wasted when they probably didn’t need to be in making “me-too!” technologies.
What’s the solution? Make the code proprietary. But when you do that, you destroy all the other benefits of Open Source. It’s a trade-off. Some types of apps and users simply aren’t fit for the OSS model.
1. We need a decent OCR app. Right now, we have two or three pieces of junk.
2. We need a decent app. for syncing Windows Mobile devices. Right now, there is stuff that sometimes works for some people. I had mine working, then it broke.
I feel we should be focusing on Distros that are harder to break and ship with easier to use backup & repair tools.
Imagine a situation where a loyal windows noob finally decides to venture into the colourful world of linux. Then breaking his/her Distro Days, maybe even Hours/Minutes after installing it only to find they have to work their way though a mountain of bash commands to (possibly) fix it.
That exact situation scares many user back to their old OS every week. (There was a time 6 years ago when I can remember jumping between various Distros and XP several times for this reason.)
Granted that no repair tool is 100% successful but would the community (especially newcomers) benefit from easier and more powerful tools that can repair the simple stuff? I think so.
I can also see an easy to use backup creator (something that sticks a restore wizard + the backed up data on the medium) going a long way towards making linux more noob friendly.
The simple truth is, most people simply aren’t willing to find & read through a mountain of documents sparsely spread around the corners of the internet and then learn the mountains of commands those docs are filled with, simply figure out how to repair something the rest of us experienced linux users would sniff out and fix in minutes.