hidden gems: software that surprises you

[keithpeter]

Hello All

Have you been surprised by features in a humble program? If so reply to this thread with a specific example.

My candidate is Gnumeric. The chart function is amazingly useful. You can produce box and whisker plots (try that on MS Excel or LibreOffice Calc), and you can customise graphs by using a tree based menu (see the dialog box screen shot below) - amazingly logical.

Xubuntu brings Gnumeric and Abiword with it, I usually install LibreOffice as I need a presentation application, and maths formatting in the word-processor. I needed to produce some handouts quickly this afternoon on my netbook, with no wifi, so I played about with Gnumeric and was pleasantly surprised. Still a few issues with rounding on auto-fill, but getting there.

[cguy]

tmux
It puts GNU screen to shame.

[mcduck]

Qualculate! (http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/) might be one such program. How can a program that looks so basic and simple pack such a serious amount of features and power?

Definitely a tool worth having around.

[TeoBigusGeekus]

tmux
It puts GNU screen to shame.

+1
Also, jpdfbookmarks.

[keithpeter]

Qualculate! (http://qalculate.sourceforge.net/) might be one such program. How can a program that looks so basic and simple pack such a serious amount of features and power?

Definitely a tool worth having around.

Ooh, yes that's a nice one, especially with gnuplot installed.

Thanks all and keep them coming

[Ric_NYC]

Miro.

[ilovelinux33467]

The Z Shell (zsh) continues to surprise me with all its powerful features such as a built in FTP client, extended maths functions, extended file globbing, right prompts, menu tab completion and more. I'm still learning how to use it properly.

Another one is KRunner (KDE's Alt+F2 run dialog). As well as being able to run commands it also has plugins such as a built in calculator, unit conversion, being able to control your music player, managing removable devices, controlling other applications such as KGet, finding contacts and being able to shut down your computer from it.

[el_koraco]

The Z Shell (zsh) continues to surprise me with all its powerful features such as a built in FTP client, extended maths functions, extended file globbing, right prompts, menu tab completion and more. I'm still learning how to use it properly.

Check it out - the ultimate zshrc (http://grml.org/zsh/)
I switched to zsh as well after installing grml, and I just cheat now, i.e. copy paste their zshrc to my user and root home directory. I've come to terms with like one percent of the shell, but it's sweet.

[ilovelinux33467]

Check it out - the ultimate zshrc (http://grml.org/zsh/)
I switched to zsh as well after installing grml, and I just cheat now, i.e. copy paste their zshrc to my user and root home directory. I've come to terms with like one percent of the shell, but it's sweet.
[/URL]

Nice, thanks for the link. I will definitely check that out. I'm thinking to try out Oh-My-Zsh as well because it has some great [URL="https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/wiki/themes"]themes (http://grml.org/zsh/):
https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh

[JRV]

Hello All

Have you been surprised by features in a humble program? If so reply to this thread with a specific example.

My candidate is Gnumeric. The chart function is amazingly useful. You can produce box and whisker plots (try that on MS Excel or LibreOffice Calc), and you can customise graphs by using a tree based menu (see the dialog box screen shot below) - amazingly logical.

Xubuntu brings Gnumeric and Abiword with it, I usually install LibreOffice as I need a presentation application, and maths formatting in the word-processor. I needed to produce some handouts quickly this afternoon on my netbook, with no wifi, so I played about with Gnumeric and was pleasantly surprised. Still a few issues with rounding on auto-fill, but getting there.

And gnumeric has the isprime() function that is missing in Libreoffice/Openoffice.

[krapp]

Music on console. Seriously iTunes and its clones suck.

Tmux does wonders on my netbook. I prefer to float GUI windows full-screen, but there's no reason to have some console programs take up a whole virtual desktop. Also, the learning curve seems less steep than Screen's.

Aptitude: it's actually a program with an interface.

Htop: search, sort, watch, KILL processes.

Ex Falso: awesome tag editor bundled with Quod Libet though I'd like an ncurses version.

[scania_gti]

Gwenview. Since i left windows - i still miss for Irfanview. Until find Gwenview ;)

[Tibuda]

You can produce box and whisker plots (try that on MS Excel or LibreOffice Calc)

http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/excel-box-and-whisker-diagrams-box-plots/

[Metallion]

Checking out that Music on Console thingy now. Quite a fun little trinket :) I doubt I'll give up Clementine for it but I like playing music from the cli. :D Especially combined with Tilda.

[keithpeter]

Hello All

I use moc on my dwm based desktop as the music player. Just sits in the 'stack' and I can set up a play list and let it run.

abcde is my ripper of choice, since I discovered the command to rip a whole cd disc to mp3. I don't like the 'song' metaphor (classical CDs often have 30+ tracks on them).

[MonolithImmortal]

Jupiter. Extended my battery life by a massive amount.

Deadbeef. Great media player, terrible name.

[krapp]

Hello All

I use moc on my dwm based desktop as the music player. Just sits in the 'stack' and I can set up a play list and let it run.

abcde is my ripper of choice, since I discovered the command to rip a whole cd disc to mp3. I don't like the 'song' metaphor (classical CDs often have 30+ tracks on them).

abcde is awesome. There's a great how-to around here written by a forum member.

Ruby Ripper is great too (opt for the CLI version here as the GUI is a buggy mess).

Unfortunately EAC (Exact Audio Copy) for Windows is still king in this arena.

[HermanAB]

Xournal and PDFShuffler - simplified my life with gawddammm PDF files immensely.

[keithpeter]

http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/excel-box-and-whisker-diagrams-box-plots/

Nice link thanks, I'll play with that at College. Gnumeric impressed me by having some of the David Tukey type graphs built in and ready to go.

[satanselbow]

Dia is major geek-chic and much more intuitive than Visio could ever dream of being... OK over egging it a bit but having battled with Visio a few time before Dia is a breath of fresh gnu :D

[satanselbow]

I don't like the 'song' metaphor (classical CDs often have 30+ tracks on them).

OMG! I've seen it all now! "Classical" and "Birmingham" in the same post :D

abcde rocks btw... in a brummie classical kinda way :guitar:

[krapp]

I don't like the 'song' metaphor (classical CDs often have 30+ tracks on them).

Do you mean how iTunes and the like resort to strict Artist - Song tags? Yeah, I hate that too.

Is the artist Bach or Gidon Kremer?

[donkyhotay]

Yakuake, I prefer gnome to KDE but this program is so useful for me I consider it worth installing all the KDE libs on top of gnome just for it. It really makes it easy to flip between GUI and CLI depending on what I'm trying to do.

[keithpeter]

OMG! I've seen it all now! "Classical" and "Birmingham" in the same post :D

abcde rocks btw... in a brummie classical kinda way :guitar:

I resemble that remark :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Conservatoire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Birmingham_Symphony_Orchestra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Choirs_Festival

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Skempton

PS if you don't know Skempton's Lento, listen to it now

[Megaptera]

Yakuake, I prefer gnome to KDE but this program is so useful for me I consider it worth installing all the KDE libs on top of gnome just for it. It really makes it easy to flip between GUI and CLI depending on what I'm trying to do.

Have you looked at Guake?! "Guake is a top-down terminal for Gnome (in the style of Yakuake for KDE, Tilda or the terminal used in Quake)"

http://guake.org/

[donkyhotay]

Thats new, last time I looked for a gnome-based program similar to yakuake the only thing I could find was tilda (which was absolute rubbish). Admittedly that was about 4-5 years ago. Thanks for suggesting that I'll have to check it out. Although it's not a big deal I just hate seeing my computer install a ton of KDE lib files for one little program that by itself is pretty small.

[Flymo]

+1 for Dia!

[Megaptera]

Thats new, ....Thanks for suggesting that I'll have to check it out. ....

You're welcome! Hope it's of use.

[keithpeter]

Dia is major geek-chic and much more intuitive than Visio could ever dream of being... OK over egging it a bit but having battled with Visio a few time before Dia is a breath of fresh gnu :D

Nice, any way of 'docking' the floating toolbar? Have to keep alt tabbing when drawing window maximised...