A never-ending quest for the best software

Well, the new version of my operating system (Ubuntu) is coming out soon. Unlike Windows or Apple operating systems, Ubuntu comes out with a new version every 6 months with minor updates. These updates do accumulate – comparing the Ubuntu version from late 2006 (when Vista was released) with the upcoming version (Windows 7 has just been released), Ubuntu has made huge strides in that time. The upcoming version of Ubuntu is whimsically code-named “Karmic Koala” – I absolutely love the use of “Karmic” as an adjective.

While there’s an option to automatically upgrade your Ubuntu installation, I usually choose to back up my data and completely reinstall since I like that clean, new operating system smell. It only takes about 15 minutes to install, and this way I have time right now to install and evaluate a whole bunch of programs that I might want to use in the future.

Web browsers: Firefox is installed by default and it’s been my main browser since before I switched to Linux. I’m considering using Epiphany instead – it’s a browser that’s made to integrate a little better into the Linux (well, GNOME anyway) environment, it uses MUCH less memory than Firefox, and it’s been upgraded to the Webkit layout engine (previously using Gecko). It very well may become my default browsing-the-web browser. Firefox will still be quite useful as I’m doing web development and will need several various extensions. There are many other popular browsers, including Google Chrome, but those don’t integrate visually nearly as well and – although Chrome starts up fast, it quickly starts munching on just as much RAM as Firefox once you open a couple tabs.

Note-taking: I’ve been using Zim. I went through a lot of changes in my note-taking programs this past few months. I used Evernote for a while, but the Windows client doesn’t work well in Linux (it is possible to run it in WINE but it gets slow after a while and the copy-paste is a little awkward). So I switched to Zim, a fantastic little program that allows for multiple levels of note/notebook hierarchy, linking between notes, and many other cool features that make it easy to save snippets of information, keep task lists, etc. It also has a transparent file structure that makes it easy to create scripts to interact with notes (for example, I wrote a simple clipping script that would save selected text as a new Zim note). Recently, I switched back to Tomboy Notes, the Ubuntu default program. I’m still coming to terms with it’s multiple-window interface, but overall it’s quite good – and the upcoming version of Ubuntu will make it much easier to keep my notes synced online.

RSS News Feed Reader: Right now I’m using RSSOwl, a nice program but kind of a giant in terms of memory use (By the way, I have plenty of memory, but I like programs to move really fast). I’m looking for a good alternative here – I may settle on Google Reader (blech).

Word Processing: As I’m leading a small group at my church, I’m going to be doing a lot more of this. OpenOffice is default on Ubuntu, and it includes a cool “Notes” feature (MS Word has this as well, I believe) that allows me to stick little annotations in to the document. For example, I can write a sheet of questions, and put my answers into little notes as I go. This is really the only thing I like about OpenOffice. Lately, it’s been a little crashy for me, and it is kind of stubborn about refusing to integrate visually with the rest of my computer. The alternative I’m looking at is KWord (the whole KOffice suite is quite nice). Even though KWord isn’t made to integrate into my GTK/GNOME environment, it can do that quite well, and the new version has a genius layout for wide screen laptop use – it puts all the toolbars, etc. on the right side of the screen in a more vertical layout. This makes more of the document visible at one time, without wasted space on the screen.However, it doesn’t support notes, as far as I can tell. This is one area where I won’t be too finicky about memory usage, I guess. I’m also thinking about Abiword as another alternative.

Text Editors/Coding: I’ve tried a lot of different programs here too: Gedit, Geany, Bluefish, Komodo Edit, and more. This will sound strange, but I’m settling on a combination of Aptana (huge program, lots of features) and Vim (much faster). Vim really can have about all the features of Aptana, but I’m having difficulty with auto-indenting, and there are times that Aptana is just more convenient.

That’s all for now.