Munckfish.net

Here’s a list of some of my favourite or most relied-upon applications on Ubuntu. It’s not exhaustive but it’s a start. It doesn’t include extras like multi-media codecs or any of the sort of things you can get easily with something like EasyUbuntu. The lists arranged by purpose and are ordered alphabetically not by preference. Some things are not available in the Ubuntu repositories and are marked as such.

Desktop

• deskbar-applet
• gnome-keyring-manager
• kde-style-polymer (from external source - makes QT apps look ok on gnome, see my post here)
• MSTCoreFonts
• nautilus-open-terminal
• nautilus-scripts:
  • nautilus-script-collection-svn (subversion shortcuts)
  • nautilus-script-manager
• skype (only beta 1.3 works, needs kde-style-polymer or looks ugly, get it from www.skype.com)
• Tomboy (desktop notes tool)
• xnest (for nested X logins)

Development

• apache2
• emacs-snapshot-gtk (emacs for the gnome desktop)
• JEdit (from external jedit repo http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/jedit)
• java:
  • ant
  • sun-java5-*
• meld (visual/graphical diff tool)
• mysql:
  • mysql-server
  • mysql-client
  • mysql-admin (note a wrapper script is needed as a bug workaround on this, can’t remember the bug link just now)
  • mysql-query
• .Net (just listing the basic dev packages here)
  • mono-devel
  • monodoc-manual
• php5:
  • php5 (basic setup for use with apache)
  • php5-* (choose whatever extra modules you need)
  • php5-cli (command line version)
• python
• ruby
  • ruby
  • irb
  • lib*-ruby (pickup any of the extra packages you need)
  • ri
  • rdoc
  • rails
• subversion
• vim-gnome (gvim)
• vmware-server

Networking

• Avahi (zeroconf/bonjour)
  • avahi-daemon
  • avahi-utils
  • libapache2-mod-dnssd (to auto-advertise apache2 sites available on your machine)
  • service-discovery-applet
  • libnss-mdns
• ethereal
• firestarter (basic firewall manager)
• gftp (sftp and ftp client)
• NetworkManager
• rdesktop (Remote Desktop and Terminal Services Client)

Sound & Multimedia

• banshee music player
• f-spot photomanager
• gnomebaker (cd-burner)
• gxine (media player)

Google Base seems to be a very worthy project, but my first use of it was disappointing. All I came across in the technology categories were agency job adverts and rubbish. To top that most of the job adverts were out of date! Clearly it’s going to need serious policing otherwise it’ll be spammed to death and full of useless out of date rubbish.

This isn’t to say that I can’t see the huge potential in it. I find the continuing move towards open, semantic, meta-data driven information storage very interesting. Attributes, tags or meta-data whatever you want to call them are a great way to free up the way data is organized in an application so that each user can use it in their own way and find new ways to view it, and new uses for those views.

Just spotted a very interesting looking Windows GUI MySQL administration tool: MySQL-Front.

I’ve been using the excellent Java based SQuirreL for a while now because it provided me a database-independant interface for administering databases . Plus it has a good selection of useful plugins. However, I think I’ll try out MySQL-Front and see if it offers any advantages for working with MySQL on Windows.