I have a problem. I’ll be the first to confess. It’s tearing me apart on the inside. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, always at the back of my mind, in the confines of my subconscious taunting and laughing at me – daring me to try something new, something different.
My problem is that my computer is too boring.
That’s right.
Before you ask, yes, I’m running Ubuntu Maverick, have been since Alpha 2. It’s just too stable, nothing ever breaks so there’s nothing to fix. I’ve already tried out pretty much every single application in the Software Center (well, those that are appealing) and I’ve nailed my install down to a few vital applications that I can’t live without.
- Docky, because I use it for window management and don’t have a window list. Looks great.
- Banshee, does the same thing as Rhythmbox but looks better and has some great plugins.
- Chromium daily builds – fastest web browser there is, and it adheres to the window buttons on the left unlike regular Chrome.
- gThumb – great for quickly cropping and resizing images. For viewing images, I use standard Eye of Gnome.
- Totem. It used to be crap, but now it’s come a long way and is a suitable replacement for VLC – at least for my needs, anyway. Nice and fast, handles all file formats I’ve ever chucked at it and it has a simple interface.
- OpenOffice suite – great for taking notes in class, although I customized it a bit so the toolbars aren’t so cluttered.
- Bibble 5 Pro. Plays nice with RAW images from my Sony DSLR and is a suitable replacement for Lightroom. Not quite as good though.
- Dropbox – more reliable than Ubuntu One and can sync with Windows and my Android.
- Skype – so I can ring Joey!
- OpenShot and Audacity – for quickly editing videos and audio respectively.
- Cheese – to take photos of myself, of course. (Actually, to do the odd recording of me playing guitar or drums or something).
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| My current desktop |
I want to find out what readers install. The repositories have a tonne of packages, many of which are probably buried gems that haven’t been discovered for ages. It would be great to compile a list of these awesome applications that no one knows about, and then I’ll write a post featuring them.
So, what are your favourite applications? Found any buried gems hidden in the repositories that you’d like to share?
Cartoon from jeromecitypubliclibrary.blogspot.com