Linux Apps I use

I’ve been running a couple different flavors of Linux for the last four-plus years. I am currently on Arch Linux. I like to experiment with different programs that fit my current workflow, or can improve my workflow in some way. So here’s my current Arch Linux setup (all links below open in new tab):

Window Manger / Desktop Environment:

• Subtle Window Manager – Manual tiling window manager with a twist. Open a window, and it appears in the center of your screen. Hit <Windows key> + <Keypad 7> to move the window to the top left corner of the screen (see where the “7″ is on your keypad?). Hit <Windows key> + <Keypad 2> to move the window to the bottom of the screen and stretch it full width. That’s the basic idea of Subtle, although there are some other features as well. I like it because it’s both keyboard- and mouse-friendly, and I can arrange windows exactly the way I want.
• Clipit – A clipboard manager that keeps track of text I select and copy. Little utility but incredibly useful. Also, Linux is nice because you can temporarily copy text by simply selecting it, and paste with a middle-click (technically, this is a feature of the X window system)
• No links here because I’m lazy, but I set my GTK and icon theme with LXAppearance, my background with Nitrogen, and my panel is built in to Subtle. I like having a launch bar, it’s handy and fits my workflow. I use Adeskbar for this.

Terminal Apps:

• Roxterm – easy-to-configure, lightweight VTE terminal without Gnome dependencies. I’d use Gnome-terminal if I was running Gnome, but I’m not. Same goes for XFCE Terminal. I like urxvt but for me, it’s always more of a pain to configure than it’s worth.
• Ranger – Really a nice column-based, Finder-like file manager that uses Vim-ish keybindings. Kind of a pain to configure, but I did it once and am keeping my config files from now on. Works best if you install “atool”, which is kind of a meta-compression-decompression utility.
• moc – a music player that pretty much just works. Awesome and super lightweight.
• pianobar – Pandora.com music streamer. Much nicer than Pandora’s Flash player, but Pandora is revamping their website. Still, this has to be better than having another tab open in your web browser. There’s also a GTK pianobar client called “Pithos”.
• pyradio – Internet radio streaming. It’s just a single python script, and I had to edit it just a little to work in Arch. Requires mplayer, which also comes in handy for listening to single audio files or watching videos.
• tyrs – a fantastic Twitter client. Currently I’m getting some kind of error with it, but that might be something in my configuration.
• vim – best text editor known to mankind. Incredibly extensible.
• Also: Git, Tig (visualization of Git repository history), pngcrush and optipng (PNG compression, I have a script that uses these), Wicd-curses (network manager), whois, qalc, scrot (screenshots), probably a few others.
• Used in past: Alpine (I absolutely love this email client but it just doesn’t fit my workflow now, I think. I might need to try it again.), Wordgrinder (really basic word processing), Abook (address book/contacts), Newsbeuter (RSS reader, I prefer Google Reader), Calcurse and wyrd (calendar apps, I prefer wyrd but I need to have shareable Google Calendars), ikog (todo-list), hnb (hierarchical notebook), cursetheweather (weather report)

Graphical Apps

• Zim – a desktop wiki, which to me really means a super-handy note-taking application. This is probably my favorite app that I use. Perfect for organizing notes (including images, links, and other media) and easily sync’ed with Dropbox. As a plus, it runs on Windows also, so I can use Dropbox to sync my notebook and access my notes on Windows when I need to work in that environment.
• Komodo Edit – Another extensible text editor with a liberal dose of vim keybindings (optional). Fits my development workflow better than Vim. Can keep code snippets as well. For HTML, be sure to install the HTML Toolkit extension.
• Font-manager – great little app for categorizing, browsing, enabling, disabling fonts on your system. Does what it says on the tin.
• GIMP (Development version) (no link, of course) – The development version of GIMP adds a couple great features: single-window mode (especially nice for a tiling window manager) and layer groups. It’s also quite stable – anecdotally, I have friends who are always complaining about Photoshop crashing, and I’ve only had a couple crashes with the development version of GIMP. The stable versions of GIMP are always quite good. The only problem I have right now is some kind of messed-up antialiasing settings that result in a greenish outline on white text. I need to convert text to paths, then path to selection, then fill with white to work around this. This wasn’t a problem for me on Ubuntu.
• Zathura and Jumanji – Ever used the Vimperator extension for Firefox? Zathura is a PDF viewer and Jumanji is a web browser with similar interface to Vimperator. Think – a web browser completely controllable with the keyboard, no need ever to visit the mouse. Excellent.
• Others: Firefox, Inkscape, Skype, Dropbox (not really graphical on Arch), Filezilla (FTP), Calibre (E-book organizer), Mirage (lightweight image viewer), gpick (color scheme editor), Shotwell (photo manager), LibreOffice, Shutter (screenshot tool) and more. I much prefer lightweight, single-use apps but will use a heavier app if it’s better or fits my workflow better.
• Others I’ve used in the past and liked: Digikam (photo management, KDE app), Geany (code editor), Jajuk (ridiculously heavyweight and incredibly ugly music player, but some sweet features), Epiphany (Gnome webkit browser)

Things I wish for:

• Easier/better workflow for testing websites in IE 6-9 without having to boot Windows.
• Better/any CMYK support in GIMP and Inkscape, and better PSD/AI/EPS import and export in these apps. The KDE image viewer Gwenview does a decent job opening PSD files, but only for viewing.
• GIMP “Layer Effects” plugin updated to work in development GIMP
• Ubuntu Unity overlay scrollbars in Arch

That about does it for me. As I noted, there are obviously other programs I use, but this takes me through my normal daily workflow.

Screenshots: