Applications for Linux

This is a list of applications that I use for my Gentoo laptop. I don't really go for applications with lots of features or with beautiful interfaces and so forth. I prefer lightweight, simple and efficient stuff.

1. Window manager: Fluxbox

2. Office suite: Libreoffice

I used to use OpenOffice. I haven't been keeping myself updated with the latest news. I only found out recently that most systems now come bundled with Libreoffice instead of OpenOffice. I just installed Libreoffice today and have not seen much difference between these two. Is it just my imagination or does Libreoffice loads up faster?

3. Browser: Firefox

4. PDF reader: mupdf 

This is a fantastic lightweight pdf reader. I only regret that I found out about this only this month! I used to use acroread but it takes ages to load up and can render my system unresponsive for a while.

I've installed another pdf reader called Okular (KDE), which I read was one of the best pdf reader for Linux. However mupdf works very well for me. Therefore I have not tried out Okular much. It's just there for backup as I have uninstalled Acroread. I may install Evince (Gnome) later to see how much dependencies it draws in. I use neither KDE nor Gnome, therefore I'd like to reduce as much dependencies as possible that I have to install.

5. Picture viewer: gqview

6. Picture editor: GIMP

7. Comics viewer: comix

8. Music player: Audacious

9. Video player: Mplayer

10. Podcast client: Gpodder

11. Ipod manager: Gtkpod

12. Tag editor: Easytag

13. Terminal: urxvt (rxvt-unicode)

I have been using urxvt for a very long time because it can display Chinese characters nicely. I think I was using xterm previously but it was quite ugly and I had problems with Chinese character.

14. Terminal editor: vim

15. File manager: Thunar

I don't use this often. I often edit my filenames through the terminal. However when you need a GUI file manager, this is a very nice one to have.