Mark Pilgrim's original 2006 list of Linux Essentials was one of the inspirations for What Are They Using? (Here we've taken to calling it "watu".) For many it comprised a handy shopping list of free stuff, graced by proper snarks in the general direction of proprietary alternatives. About amaroK, Mark wrote, "It's just like iTunes except it automatically fetches lyrics from Argentina, automatically looks up bands on Wikipedia, automatically identifies songs with MusicBrainz, and its developers are actively working on features that don't involve pushing DRM-infected crap down my throat."
Well, just in time for this month's watu, Mark came out with his Essentials, 2008 edition. With his permission, here is his posted text, verbatim...
Via email, "Chris" asks:
Enjoyed the 2006 Linux essentials list... Do you have any plans to update the Essentials list for the latest and greatest that Linux 2008 has to offer?
Well, I do now.
- Debian GNU/Linux, because of Firefox bug 354622. In particular, comment 39 outlines Debian's position. (Yes, I know Debian still ships with non-free firmware, so Debian's position on Firefox is inconsistent. But no firmware developer has ever tried to force Debian to "bend the DFSG a little.")
- GNU Emacs, still.
- Iceweasel (see above) + Adblock Plus + NoScript + NoSquint + Greasemonkey.
- Pidgin (formerly GAIM).
- getmail instead of Thunderbird. It turns out I don't actually want a desktop email client. I use Google Apps For Your Domain to manage my own address @ my own domain, and I archive it with a nightly cron job using getmail.
- gPhoto 2 instead of digiKam. It turns out I don't actually want a photo library, just dated directories of image files imported directly from my camera.
- On the other hand, I do want a music library, and amaroK is still best-of-breed.
- KSnapshot, KTorrent, Konversation, k3b, and k9copy are also best-of-breed.
- There is still no good iMovie clone for Linux, but OpenMovieEditor looks promising. I learned about it at FSOSS last week. I fear that Linux video editing will always just "look promising."
- I’ve warmed up to GIMP, which has largely replaced Krita for my (very light) graphic editing needs. At FSOSS, I learned about ingimp, which allows you to opt-in to collect and aggregate detailed statistics on how real people use GIMP.
- GNOME Do, a Quicksilver-inspired launcher++.
- mplayer, specifically the version provided by the awesome debian-multimedia.org.
On the command line side, I now use urxvt, screen, ZSH, and these configuration files. If you use the command line more than once a day and haven't learned about screen yet, you're missing out. I still use SSH heavily, in too many ways to count. If you use SSH and haven't learned about SSH keys and SSH tunneling yet, you're really missing out. Also: sshfs, rsync and SSH, SSH VPN, &c. (Note: most of these work on Mac OS X too, and Windows with cygwin or PuTTY.)
I still use rsync for backups to my NAS, even though I have two Drobo enclosures that I manage with drobo-utils. RAID is not a backup solution, and ZFS on Linux isn't quite there yet.
Things I don't use anymore:
- A desktop email client. As mentioned above, I use Gmail (on my own domain, so I keep my email address).
- OpenOffice.org, or any other desktop office suite. I use Google Docs, which exports to Open Document format. I keep studious local backups in ODF/ODS/etc.
- VLC. There is very little that mplayer can't handle.
- Democracy Player. Ze frank doesn't post daily anymore, and I don't particularly follow other video podcasts.
- KMyMoney. It's good, but I fell behind in organizing my finances and it got left on the wayside.
- EasyUbuntu (now Medibuntu). Debian-multimedia.org satisfies all my illicit patent-encumbered needs.
- Beagle. GNOME Do is more than enough for my local search needs.
- Konsole. RXVT-Unicode instead.
- AllTray.
- Brightside.
I also no longer use the ratpoison window manager. I've settled on XFCE instead, with the PCMan file manager. I encourage every Linux user to try an alternate window manager for at least a month. Find one that fits your brain and customize the hell out of it.
For linky goodness, see the Web version of this piece or go to Mark's source at http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/10/28/essentials-2008.
- Doc Searls