programs
My favourite programs and why I use them
Programs I use a lot during everydays work
On this page I will try to give an outline of the programs I use and why. I usually choose my programs on the basis of usability, then look. But look is totally second, i.e. if there are two alternatives for a given task, one does the job and the other merely looks cool without doing what I want from it you can bet I will choose the first one how "ugly" it may be. Maybe someone will try "my" programs because of that, maybe not :-).
I have three computers. An embedded server (a NSLU2), an old workstation (Sun Ultra 5) and one Laptop (Toshiba M30-951). As mentioned all of them are Debian GNU/Linux only boxes.
- grub - A very flexible boot manager. Especially suited for the occasional kernel tryout. Also themable (read: "can use background pictures").
- gdm (the closest to a homepage would be here) - gdm can be themed and some themes are pretty cool.
- WindowMaker - Flexible, fast, stylish. The instance I first used it (around 1999) I fell in love and since then sticked to it (partly because every other window manager lacks some crucial ability that Window Maker offers).
- gkrellm - Some interesting informations like processor activity, speed and temperature or network throughput and connectivity (WLAN). Also damn nice to look at with the right theme. And gkrellflynn is there to brighten up my day ;-).
- GNU Emacs - "Using Emacs is a kind of philosophy of life, or isn't it?" This quotation says it all :-). I carefully tweaked my ~/.emacs over the years and Emacs is started automatically at login.
- ROX Filer - Fast and very usable. One of the little details I like so much about it for example is that "double clicking into nowhere" resizes the active window to some usable size depending on how much files are in the current directory.
- Firefox/Iceweasel - One nice, standard compliant piece of software. Without tabbed browsing I would be lost ;-).
- liferea - Whenever an internet connection is available I start this awesome piece of work.
- rxvt-unicode - Though I never intend to write anything in braille or cyrillic I can at least look at the glyphs in awe with rxvt-unicode ;-). Also the pseudo transparency is done quite nice.
- bash - Let me tell you a little secret: up to this point all software mentioned is / are pure eye candy and luxury goods. I could live without them. But I would not want to live in a world without bash. Let me tell you another secret: that is not wholly the truth. Tools like sed, grep, wc, sort, etc. are so addictive I can not stand any computer without them.
- aptitude - My daily Debian update is done using aptitude. Fast and sleek.
- Amarok - This programme is legen... - wait for it - ...dary!
- OpenSSH - Having your working environment securely available wherever the internet is available is just plain cool :-).
- screen - Man, I would be lost without this precious piece of work! Without the ability do detach / reattach my programs at will I just would not know what to do.
- mcabber - My IM client of choice. Usable, capable and stable.
- mutt - I used to use Mozilla Thunderbird. But that was just as long as I got my hands on mutt. After that I never looked back.
I have also uploaded a screenshot of my desktop.
