Your Favourite UNSUNG Applications

[euchrid]

I know, I know, there are several threads along the lines of 'what is your favourite app' - this is not the same thing. This is just for ones that other people might not or are unlikely to know about, or ones that simply don't get mentioned often enough. The idea is to share knowledge and help out newcomers and beginners to see the crazy things you can do on Ubuntu.

Be as specialist or ordinary as you like, but try to include a link (especially if not in the standard repositories), and explain what it is and what it does. We all know (or can find out about) things like GIMP, Amarok, Azareus, whatever. Just post the less known ones!

Here are mine:

Treeline (http://www.bellz.org/treeline/) - This is exactly the kind of thing I moved to Linux for; it provides a tree-like way to organise data - but it's so much more! I use it to arrange a lot of notes and writing, to keep a list of command line applications and open them at a click, and as an Address Book from which I can open relevant applications, but I keep coming up with new ideas for it; it works brilliantly, seems very stable, and can quickly become invaluable!

Lyx (http://www.lyx.org/) - I deleted this four times because it kept irritating me, and I kept going back because it kept sounding like what I needed. Now, it's indispensable; it's worth the learning curve if you write anything longer than a letter on a regular basis!

cmus (http://cmus.sourceforge.net/) - a simple, quick and easy console only music player. Straightforward and light.

Mirage (http://mirageiv.berlios.de/download.html) - really excellent image viewer and editor, that is the quickest I've seen. (I tried everything else in the repositories that came up under 'image viewer'). Perfect for simple editing like rotating and resizing, and also takes custom actions. qiv (http://www.klografx.net/qiv/) was great and quick, but you can't save any edits with it - yet ideal for slideshows or presentations.

yakuake (http://yakuake.uv.ro/) - a dropdown, pre-loaded terminal emulator doesn't seem to get talked about all that much (at least as far as I've seen), but I love it for quick terminal tasks. Although I suppose it would be just as good for long-term tasks in the background, I somehow don't trust it enough just yet... Maybe I should.

Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch (http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/) - not in the repositories - this really stretches sounds - a lot. A really great and unique tool, and really good for making drones and weird effects.

Xournal (http://xournal.sourceforge.net/) - you can write notes on lined 'paper' with a stylus/graphics tablet with this. It's fun just to play with, but VERY handy as a realistic notepad (say, if you wanted to draw a rough sketch and type some text next to it without playing around in a graphics program).

Kazehakase (http://kazehakase.sourceforge.jp/) - I really think this web browser is going to take off. You can change rendering engines, configure the hell out of it, and it has a really nice feel. It's not perfect, but it's also not really buggy, and it's my favourite at the moment. It's not too heavy or too light, and it lets you just get on with using the internet, not playing with settings (unless you want to).

zim (http://pardus-larus.student.utwente.nl/~pardus/projects/zim/) - desktop wiki. I really like this, but I can't find a decent use for it. The program is so good and so simple that I really want to use it, but I sort of don't need it. But I can't throw it out... Maybe this is why I don't see it mentioned much. Still, it might be a better way to keep notes or write poems and novels with...

aria2 (http://aria2.sourceforge.net/) - command line torrent downloader. I much prefer this to other, GUI torrent clients that I have found to crash or not even start. This downloads a torrent quickly and simply, with one line on the command line - but it's probably only suited to people who download the occasional torrent, rather than heavy users...

I'm sure the Ubuntu community has loads more that are much less well known... Bring 'em on!

[mssever]

Lyx (http://www.lyx.org/) - I deleted this four times because it kept irritating me, and I kept going back because it kept sounding like what I needed. Now, it's indispensable; it's worth the learning curve if you write anything longer than a letter on a regular basis!
I haven't used Lyx in a long time, but OpenOffice (and MS Word, for that matter) has the same functionality with what is, in my opinion, a nicer interface. The main purpose of Lyx, as I see it, is to separate design from content, much as the web world uses CSS to separate structure from presentation. If you use OpenOffice's style tools, you have the benefits of Lyx without having to learn a whole new system, mess with TeX, or suffer an ugly interface.

[euchrid]

No no no, Lyx does not offer the same functionality as OpenOffice at all; Lyx does away with all the formatting tools, and formats the document for you. Rather than changing font or style every time you start a new section, you let the structure of the document define how the document will appear; all you have to do is write.

Also, Lyx, in my experience, handles that formatting far better than OpenOffice; a printed Lyx document looks far more professional than a printed OpenOffice document.

That is not to say that there is anything wrong with OpenOffice, but it is a very different program. If all you do with a word processor is write letters or make flyers, then Lyx is useless to you, and OpenOffice is far superior. With Lyx, you have a choice between no control over the formatting (which is brilliant if you write a technical manual or a novel, for example), and complete control (which is incredibly complicated to set up and only useful if you must have everything exactly to your specifications.

Furthermore, Lyx can resize an entire book, print a pdf of it, allow you to jump between chapters and sections with an intelligent menu, and change all the formatting or allow you to move all the chapters of a book; OpenOffice is not only quite bad, by comparison, at these things, but I have found it sluggish with documents over 100 pages, and it has even crashed a few times - which is how I ended up moving to Lyx. But OpenOffice is not really set up to work for novel-writing, and does not try to be.

Once I saw a book I'd written printed out with Lyx, I was amazed how professional it was, and knew I'd never turn back to OpenOffice for large documents. That 'ugly interface' allows you to concentrate on what you are writing, not how it is formatted, and it is not necessary to mess with Tex in order to use Lyx. Ultimately, if you want a professional looking document (that is, if you are, or are trying to be a professional writer of some sort), or you need to write a long document, Lyx is worth a try. If you do not need these things, then you are better off with a standard word processor, and AbiWord is just as good as OpenOffice for a simple letter or notice.

Yes, Lyx takes time to learn - but not half as long as it takes to write a book, nor to work out how to make OpenOffice print that book out so that it looks professional. And once you learn Lyx, you can continue writing without having to fiddle with settings or save templates or work out which font looks best. The command line also takes time to learn, but its benefits are self-evident when you manage to get a task done in the background that used to take hours to complete. Lyx is like a command line for written documents; very powerful, pretty complicated, but ultimately rewarding - assuming the job you're doing is big enough to warrant the learning curve.

Now, back to the thread; anyone else got any 'unsung applications' they want to share with the community?

[bruce89]

I haven't used Lyx in a long time, but OpenOffice (and MS Word, for that matter) has the same functionality with what is, in my opinion, a nicer interface. The main purpose of Lyx, as I see it, is to separate design from content, much as the web world uses CSS to separate structure from presentation. If you use OpenOffice's style tools, you have the benefits of Lyx without having to learn a whole new system, mess with TeX, or suffer an ugly interface.

Well, LyX is a LaTeX frontend, so this comparison is wrong.

[olejorgen]

Here is a similar thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=382137

units Commandline unit conversion (in the repos)

[euchrid]

Here is a similar thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=382137

units Commandline unit conversion (in the repos)

Gah! Can't believe I missed that other thread! Sorry for the duplication. Oh well, at 69 pages it's probably long enough anyway...

units is great - like dict, it just gets the job done simply and efficiently. Thanks for that. Reminded me as well, the guy that did Treeline also did one called ConvertAll (http://www.bellz.org/convertall/index.html), which takes the process a bit further and lets you convert, to use his example, "from inches per decade, that's fine. Or from meter-pounds. Or from cubic nautical miles. The units don't have to make sense to anyone else." Crazy, but good.