Introduction
There are many applications out there for Linux, some you have to pay for but most are free. If there isn't an app out there that will do what you want, you could always write one! Listed below are just a few of the apps I use regularly.
Internet Browsers
Currently on my system I have 3 browsers. I normally use Netscape Navigator when viewing local pages and surfing the net. For quick no-frills access I'd use Lynx. It's a text browser which cuts away all the noise from the net. Somewhere on a partition I have Amaya. This browser is being developed by W3C. It has some advance features including support for the up and coming MathML. MathML is a Math Markup Language. If a browser supports MathML, it will be able to display complex mathematical formulae with ease.
Editors
There are many different editors available. I use two editors regularly. XEmacs is used to edit large files and ease repetitive editing. It also doubles up as an Integrated Development Environment for my HTML code. For some quick and dirty editing I use vi. This editor is extremely powerful though terminal based.
WindowMaker
WindowMaker has to be my favourite Window Manager. It provides the Look and Feel of NeXT. It is fast, robust and new features are being added frequently. To enhance the look and feel programs can be developed using TkStep or WINGs (stands for WINGS Is Not Gnustep). These provide a NeXT style widget set. From very early on, WindowMaker has supported themes. The one I am using as I write this is called "Openstep".
Dock Apps
These are apps that reside in the dock. This is the line of icons that run along the right hand side of my desktop. These and many more are available at windowmaker.mezaway.org
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WMTime
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WMMon
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WMMon -s
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WMPPP
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WMMail
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WMTime provides the time in both analog and digital format. It is a replacement for ASClock which is a clone of the clock used in NeXT.
WMMon provides three different functions, two of which are shown above. The default option provides information on the cpu usage and load. The '-s' option provides system information like swap/memory usage and uptime. While '-i' gives information on disk I/O operations.
WMPPP is one of the most useful apps in the dock as it allows me to start and stop my on-line connection at the click of a button. It also provides a graphical display of the traffic on the line. It calls the scripts used to get on/off line to start/stop the connection and then reads information from /proc/net to generate the displays.
WMMail montiors the mail folders I've specified in its rc file and when any folder changes it beeps and the 'e' rotates around. By double clicking on the icon, the email reader can be launched.
Graphics
One of the best graphics packages I have used, under any operating system, is GIMP which stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program. It is ideal for web graphics, easy to use, versatile and best of all, it's free. It's available at the GIMP web site where more information is also available.
One of the standard graphics packages under Unix for many years has been the excellent XV.
E-mail
At the moment I am using an e-mail client called Postilion. It is based on TkRat. Of all the e-mail programs I have looked at under Linux this program provided the greatest functionality. Another good e-mail program is XFMail. It lacked one feature (or I couldn't find it) that I really wanted, the ability to assign mail folders different 'Reply-To' fields, being able to do this takes away the need to check the reply fields everytime a mail is sent.
To get the mail from your server you can use fetchmail. This combined with procmail will place the mail in any directory/file you like. These mail files can then be monitored using something like biff or WMMail.
root-tail
root-tail sits on the desktop and continuously scans a specified log for any changes, if a change occurs it updates the display. This is handy for scanning the /var/log/messages logfile; especially for monitoring the dial-up sequence and catching the assigned IP when going on-line.
Office Suites
There are several suites available for Linux. Currently Corel has a version of Wordperfect for Linux. Two fully featured Suites available are Applixware and Star Office. Star Office can be downloaded for free, though it is at least 50Mb!
Web Servers
There is only one web server that you really need to know about and that is Apache. It's used in more than 500f ALL internet web servers. It's free! It began life as a few patches to a server (a patchy web server, Apache, get it!) and is now the de facto web server. The project even forced big blue to give away free software! If you would like to use a Java based web server, you can get Jigsaw from the W3 web site.
