MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - What are some of the software programs you use?

DMcCunney · 02-04-2010, 05:53 PM

The long answer is "everything including the kitchen sink".

The desktop multiboots Win XP Pro SP3, Win 2K SP4, and Ubuntu Linix 9.10.

But in no particular order:

MS Office 2007 Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Outlook, Publisher (Mostly here for compatibility reasons, though I do use Publisher for occasional DTP projects. I can't justify InDesign for my limited usage, and know how to make Publisher do what I want.)

Open Office 3.2 RC1 Free open source office suite, compatible with MS Office.

Firefox 3.6 (though IE 8, Opera 10.10, Safari 4, and Chrome 4.X dev branch are also installed.

Thunderbird 3.0 (as a newsreader. I handle email with GMail in Firefox.)

Cygwin A port of the Gnu toolchain to Windows. Includes the Gnu compiler suite and all of the standard Linux utilties including the bash shell. It provides a POSIX compatible development environment in Windows, and targets compatibility with Red Hat Linux. Rather than rewrite every tool to use Windows system calls, the developers implemented a subset of standard Unix system calls encapsulated in a DLL. Code meant for Linux links against the DLL, sees what it expects, and most stuff builds "out of the box".

PuTTY A free, open source, telnet/ssh client for Windows.

FileZilla A free, open source FTP client for Windows.

Google Desktop An index into the hundreds of thousands of files spread ober five hard drives in my system. Handy for locating things by content. For finding actual files by name, I use Locate32.

Notepad++ A free, open source text editor intended as a Notepad replacement among other things. A tabbed interface, based on the Scintilla edit control, with code folding and syntax highlighting for programming languages some folks have never heard of.

Eclipse IBM's free, open source programmer's IDE, cross platform and written in Java.

Active State Perl, Python, and Tcl-Tk Free, open source scripting languages.

Symantec Corporate A/V automatically updated weekly with virus signatures.

Sygate Personal Firewall Bought and killed off by Symantec, but the last freeware version is widely available and works fine. Low reaource usage, and the best interface I've seen on a firewall.

7zip Free, open source archive utility. Opens 7z, xz, zip, gzip, bzip2, tar, lzma, rar, cab, arj, z, cpio, rpm, deb. lzh, split, chm, iso, udf, compound, wim, drg, xar, nsts, fat, vhd and mir files. Creates 7z, xz, zip, gzip, bzip2, and tar archives. I have several other archivers to handle formats 7zip doesn't support, but it handles the most common ones, and the engine it uses has been ported to Linux as well.

TightVNC A fork of the original Virtual Network Computing software released as open source by AT&T's no longer extant Cambridge UK labs. It's a remote control solution similat to Windows Remote Desktop, but available for things that aren't Windows. (I had it up on Solaris servers at a former employer to be able to use a GUI without having to install an X-server package on my desktop.)

Process Explorer A free replacement for Microsoft's Task Manager in Windows, with a lot more power and features. the author, Mark Russinovich, is a noted writer and lecturer on Windows programming topics, and I've sometimes suspected he knows more about what goes on inside Windows than Microsoft. Microsoft seems to think he knows something: they bought his company, and he and his partner now work in MS's Core Architecture group.

Paint.NET A free, open source replacement for the standard Windows Paint program, based on the .NET libraries. I have an older version of Photoshop, but PAint.NET does the stuff I normally need to do.

Audacity A free, open source audio editor, also available for MAc OS/X and Linux.

Vim Bram Moolenar's "Vi Improved", a powerful editor based on the design of the Unix vi editor, with many enhancements. Vim ships as vi in most Linux distributions.

Emacs Richard M. Stallman's famous editor, originally implemented in the TECO language on a DEC-10 at MIT, and subsequently rewritten in Lisp. Emacs is essentially an interpreter for a flavor of Lisp, and most of it is written in the flavor of lisp it implements. If you are fluent in elisp, you can make emacs do pretty much anything, and the are emacs "major modes" for editing most programming languages, reading and replying to email, reading and replying in newsgroups, talking to the system from a command line, and playing games. Old time Unix users would start emacs when they logged in, and do everything from within it.

There's an awful lot more. This just covers some high spots.
______
Dennis
Why yes, I am a geek. Why do you ask?

02-04-2010, 05:53 PM	#19
DMcCunney New York Editor Posts: 6,384 Karma: 16540415 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: PalmTX, Pocket eDGe, Alcatel Fierce 4, RCA Viking Pro 10, Nexus 7	The long answer is "everything including the kitchen sink". The desktop multiboots Win XP Pro SP3, Win 2K SP4, and Ubuntu Linix 9.10. But in no particular order: MS Office 2007 Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Outlook, Publisher (Mostly here for compatibility reasons, though I do use Publisher for occasional DTP projects. I can't justify InDesign for my limited usage, and know how to make Publisher do what I want.) Open Office 3.2 RC1 Free open source office suite, compatible with MS Office. Firefox 3.6 (though IE 8, Opera 10.10, Safari 4, and Chrome 4.X dev branch are also installed. Thunderbird 3.0 (as a newsreader. I handle email with GMail in Firefox.) Cygwin A port of the Gnu toolchain to Windows. Includes the Gnu compiler suite and all of the standard Linux utilties including the bash shell. It provides a POSIX compatible development environment in Windows, and targets compatibility with Red Hat Linux. Rather than rewrite every tool to use Windows system calls, the developers implemented a subset of standard Unix system calls encapsulated in a DLL. Code meant for Linux links against the DLL, sees what it expects, and most stuff builds "out of the box". PuTTY A free, open source, telnet/ssh client for Windows. FileZilla A free, open source FTP client for Windows. Google Desktop An index into the hundreds of thousands of files spread ober five hard drives in my system. Handy for locating things by content. For finding actual files by name, I use Locate32. Notepad++ A free, open source text editor intended as a Notepad replacement among other things. A tabbed interface, based on the Scintilla edit control, with code folding and syntax highlighting for programming languages some folks have never heard of. Eclipse IBM's free, open source programmer's IDE, cross platform and written in Java. Active State Perl, Python, and Tcl-Tk Free, open source scripting languages. Symantec Corporate A/V automatically updated weekly with virus signatures. Sygate Personal Firewall Bought and killed off by Symantec, but the last freeware version is widely available and works fine. Low reaource usage, and the best interface I've seen on a firewall. 7zip Free, open source archive utility. Opens 7z, xz, zip, gzip, bzip2, tar, lzma, rar, cab, arj, z, cpio, rpm, deb. lzh, split, chm, iso, udf, compound, wim, drg, xar, nsts, fat, vhd and mir files. Creates 7z, xz, zip, gzip, bzip2, and tar archives. I have several other archivers to handle formats 7zip doesn't support, but it handles the most common ones, and the engine it uses has been ported to Linux as well. TightVNC A fork of the original Virtual Network Computing software released as open source by AT&T's no longer extant Cambridge UK labs. It's a remote control solution similat to Windows Remote Desktop, but available for things that aren't Windows. (I had it up on Solaris servers at a former employer to be able to use a GUI without having to install an X-server package on my desktop.) Process Explorer A free replacement for Microsoft's Task Manager in Windows, with a lot more power and features. the author, Mark Russinovich, is a noted writer and lecturer on Windows programming topics, and I've sometimes suspected he knows more about what goes on inside Windows than Microsoft. Microsoft seems to think he knows something: they bought his company, and he and his partner now work in MS's Core Architecture group. Paint.NET A free, open source replacement for the standard Windows Paint program, based on the .NET libraries. I have an older version of Photoshop, but PAint.NET does the stuff I normally need to do. Audacity A free, open source audio editor, also available for MAc OS/X and Linux. Vim Bram Moolenar's "Vi Improved", a powerful editor based on the design of the Unix vi editor, with many enhancements. Vim ships as vi in most Linux distributions. Emacs Richard M. Stallman's famous editor, originally implemented in the TECO language on a DEC-10 at MIT, and subsequently rewritten in Lisp. Emacs is essentially an interpreter for a flavor of Lisp, and most of it is written in the flavor of lisp it implements. If you are fluent in elisp, you can make emacs do pretty much anything, and the are emacs "major modes" for editing most programming languages, reading and replying to email, reading and replying in newsgroups, talking to the system from a command line, and playing games. Old time Unix users would start emacs when they logged in, and do everything from within it. There's an awful lot more. This just covers some high spots. ______ Dennis Why yes, I am a geek. Why do you ask?