Software

Software I like and use...

Here's the software I like and use. For the curious... this site was mainly created with Nvu out of laziness, and then the html cleaned up a bit in gedit. Most graphics were greated with the gimp, or taken from KDE icon sets :)

-----Key-----
[U] - Runs on unixy OSs (GNU/Linux, *BSD, probably OS X, Solaris, GNU/Hurd, and maybe Windows with cygwin)
[W] - Runs on the EVIL windows. Without cygwin or otherwise having to mess around hugely.

[ Text editors and Office type programs/utilities ]

gedit
The official GNOME text editor.. it's nice! Simple and relatively well featured. And not a self contained OS like emacs.
[U]

gnu nano
Console text editor and clone of the not-entirely-free (as in freedom) pico. It's pretty good, but personally i'd prefer to use the next one...
[U][W]

ee
...easy editor! on screen help and an easy to use menu accessable by pressing escape, it's less buggy than nano too :)
[U]

Open Office.org
So much better than that *other* bloated awful *other* Office "suite", that Redmond export, Windows only, with 32 GB RAM and 16 Opterons in a cluster, 4 terabyte minimum harddrive space crap. And *this* one runs on unixes! yay!
[U][W]

Xpdf
Nicest pdf reader I've seen.
[U][W]

[ Internet stuff ]

ELinks
For a text mode browser.. this is pretty amazing. Cookies, of course, are supported... along with javascript... and... tabbed browsing!! tabbed browsing in your console!! hehehehe that thought never ceases to amaze me even though I've used elinks for ages now. But, I feel it's the *best* of the text mode browsers.
[U]

Gaim
"Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client ... compatible with AIM and ICQ (Oscar protocol), MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks." Ummm.. yeah. Gaim pretty much does *all* the protocols. In one program, kinda like Trillian. 'cept... and here's the (optional, by default switched on) feature I *really* love about it.. Tabbed conversations! All conversations from all protocols in one tabbed window! No more annoying IM windows popping up and stealing focus as you're typing elsewhere, as long as one conversation is already open! Yay!!!
[U][W]

irssi
A lovely console IRC client! My favourite, out of the ones I've seen.
[U]

Mozilla Firefox
Lovely web browser, featuring popup blocking built in, excellent security from yucky spyware accidentally getting on your machine, tabbed browsing, and this wonderful thing called extensions... When you first get firefox, apart from the popup blocking, security, and tabbed browsing stuff, it's a little basic. Maybe you want Firefox to save the tabs you have open when you close the browser, and reopen them when you reopen the browser. Or you want to change the default text zoom level to something more readable. Or you want to see how many messages you've recieved in Gmail. Or what the weather's going to be like. So, to make Firefox have these features, you just go find an extension that'll do it for you. And there's an amazing choice of what you can add to the browser too :) Extensions can be found in various places, but here are the 4 places I go to (and trust for extensions):
Mozilla update (site may act funny from non-Mozilla browsers), Extension Room, Texturizer.net's extensions page, and The Extensions Mirror.
[U][W]

Xchat
I love this IRC client! It's great! Nothing hugely informative to say about it other than that.
[U][W]

[ Games ]

Chromium B.S.U.
Because.. it's pretty! and kinda fun if you're in a scrolling spaceship shoot at things mood. Of course, it seems to need a 3D card, and it's a 2D game, oddly... but it appears 3D acceleration was needed for its prettiness.
[U][W]

Frozen Bubble
A very pretty, cute, and stylish clone of Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust A Move). Fun, and very cross platform.. there's a java version playable online, although its control seems poorer than the installed version, and there's even a port to certain mobile phones.
[U][W]

Kobo Deluxe
This is an enhanced version of the old game xkobo. It runs on a ridiculous amount of platforms. Even Amigas. I'm half expecting to see a C64 port someday. It's a very addictive, fun game, the graphics are simple but they work well.
[U][W]

[ Multimedia type stuff ]

Audacity
Wonderful free sound editing program. It supports import and export of wav, aiff, mp3 and ogg vorbis formats, possibly other formats too, recording/playback (obviously), the standard cut/copy/paste stuff, multi track mixing, digital effects and effect plug-ins (VST and LADSPA), amplitude envelope editing, noise removal, and can handle sample rates up to 96KHz/24 bit.
[U][W]

Grip
Grip's a fantastic easy to use CD ripping frontend for unixes. Has the ripping abilities of cdparanoia built in, can also use external rippers, and external encoders to just easily take your CD and encode it to mp3, ogg vorbis, ogg flac, or anything. Once set up, a CD can be ripped in about 3 mouse clicks.
[U]

Ogle
Ogle is "The first opensource DVD player to support DVD menus!", and it also just works really well, without any messing about. With the libdvdcss library, it can play any encrypted DVD. By the way, use of that library is possibly illegal, and so much better than using proprietry players. I mean for a start, no more being forced to watch "If you copy this DVD, you're a naughty pirate and you'll go to prison" in about 30 different languages, most of which you can't read. No more unskippable adverts. And of course, no region locks. Naturally, I wouldn't advocate any use of this bad evil naughty library. I fully believe that Hollywood rightfully owns our souls and therefore has the right to force us to watch adverts for half an hour before we see our movies. And naturally, we shouldn't be able to watch US DVDs in Europe, either. Because Hollywood says so.
[U]

The Gimp
The Gimp is a free photoshop-like image manipulation program. It works very well, is full of features, although the interface can be a little hard to get used to. I like it anyway, and it is what I used for most of the graphics on this site.
[U][W]

XMMS
XMMS is a free audio player with a Winamp 2.x style interface. Supports most audio formats, including tracker files and stuff like SNES/NES/Megadrive (Genesis)/C64 (Sid) audio, given the appropriate plugins. Naturally, it does playlists, shuffle, repeat, all that stuff, and has visualisation/effects/input/output plugins.
[U]

Xine
I like Xine. It's a great video/audio player, supports most formats, audio CDs, VCDs, DVDs, AVI, MOV, WMV, MP3, OGG, etc.. nice simple interface, playlists, it works nicely :)
[U]

[ When I *have* to use Windows... ]

When it's absolutely unavoidable.. I find 3 programs *essential* to keep the machine secure. Firefox of course (see above)... a FAR FAR more secure and safe web browser than the awful default... *and* with inbuild popup blocking... and then theres:

Zonealarm (free version)
A wonderful firewall app for Windows. This is the FIRST thing I will download, and once it's downloaded I WONT connect to the Internet on Windows without it. The free version works fine for general use.
[W]

Ad-aware (free version)
A great spyware finding and removing tool. Gets rid of the little nasties dubious advertisers try to leave on your machine. Again, the free version is fine for general use.
[W]

....and more soon!!