Yeah, we’ve all seen the top this top that “Linux mush have applications” lists that are taking up unnecessary space on the web and more importantly are an unnecessary waste of everyones time. They really get annoying after a while, because it’s very clear that most of these lists just filled with exotic crap that only serves the weird and very limited needs of the poster himself/herself.

So having said that, I’ve decided to make my own list. I do realize I’m wasting time and precious webspace doing this, but my host says “unlimited space” and I intend to put that theory to the test (which could take a while since I’m currently only up to 12mb… why oh why did I go overkill on hosting??). My list doesn’t contain anything new or remotely exciting.

Anyway, here’s my list of crap I find useful when working on my Linux machine

1. Firefox 3
Yeah, now some of you are going “meh dah, but I’ve got Firefox installed by default, so there’s nothing new about that”. I realize that, but some of you might be on a really crappy distro, or have been on the moon the last four years and not heard about it. I’m trying to do you a favor here, so don’t give me crap!

Then just as I’m about to let the subject go, someone mutters in the corner, “yeah, but Firefox is too power hungry”. You know what? NO! It’s not Firefox that’s too power hungry, it’s your computer that’s rubbish. It’s like saying, “security shoes are too heavy, so I’ll wear sandals while operating this heavy machinery”. I don’t care about your early 90s machine with 200MB harddrive and the processing power of a dying caged canary… don’t you think the poor thing has suffered enough? Put it out of its misery.

2. VLC media player
You know… for movies and shit. I like it because it plays many formats and you can boost the sound up to 400%. I hate it when you’re watching a movie and you can hardly hear what’s being said. I also don’t like subtitles, because they divert my attention from the movie itself. And while my attention is diverted, there could be a hot chick on the screen doing naughty stuff, and I would miss it. Damn crappy sound and annoying subtitles! So yeah… sound is important.

3. Deluge BitTorrent Client
Why? Because we all have huge files that we need to share all the time, day and night. What these files are, I’m totally oblivious to, but I hear they run well on VLC.

I wonder what they were thinking when they made the Transmissions BitTorrent client a default install in Ubuntu and Linux Mint. It must have been a moment of temporary insanity when someone went, “yeah, we’ll bundle Compiz with the distro, because almost all computers can run it, but we’ll also bundle on Transmissions in case of fluffy space bunny attack”. That’s my theory anyway.

4. Google Earth
I love Google Earth. I can zoom in on my house. My roof is green. I can also zoom in on my neighbors house and check if their car was in the driveway the day the satellite took the photo. I like this lazy approach to stalking. The Google Earth images of my country were taken a couple of years ago though, so I’m a bit behind.

5. aMSN
Yes! Very good! It looks like crap, but that’s part of the charm. You can go to their website and get another theme, but who can be bothered? It works, and that’s what’s important. You can even be so lazy that you don’t even bother installing aMSN and just go with Pidgin, which is pre-installed (on Ubuntu and such). Which brings me to my next application.

6. Pidgin
When you’re just too damn lazy to install aMSN. Also comes in handy if you use other IM services other than MSN.

7. GIMP
For those times you feel like wearing a leather mask and a… no wait. GIMP image editor. I was confused there for a while. Truly sorry about that

I was a big Photoshop fan, but I have this thing where it doesn’t seem real unless I can run the application natively. Of course, I do run Counterstrike on WINE, but that doesn’t bother me, because my skills with that are surreal (yes, it was a joke, laugh damn you!).

But honestly, the more I use the GIMP, the more I like it. Fantastic application.

8. Bluefish editor
For webcoding and shit. I don’t like WYSIWYG. And it’s blue and a fish! What more could you possibly wish for?

9. Gmount-iso
Great for mounting those pesky ISO files. I hate burning file images to CD/DVD when I can just mount and install them instead. Also, my DVD-burner has been a bit dead lately, so it comes in very handy.

10. Skype
Yay! (I feel a bit of laziness coming on… kinda like what has been going on with the Skype for Linux development team lately)

11. FileZilla
It’s not just another ftp client. Just look at the name. Say it with me, “FileZilla”. I can see Godzilla in the back of my mind. It gives me an enormous feeling of accomplishment to imagine how my file uploading could be terrorizing Japan.

That’s it for my “Wooooo you’ve got to have this for Linux” list. You’re Linux users, you’re smart, you can decide what crap to put on your own computers. I do realize I’d make the worst dictator in the world. I can see Raúl Castro laughing hysterically at me. Oh well…

Happy Linuxing!

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