Killer Applications for Shift Linux

[Barney T. Administrators]

Hi All,

We were mulling over what would make for some great "killer apps" for Shift One. I'm not talking about just the standard package set, but something that would make our distro a "must have".

So far, we have thought of Avant Window Navigator (AWN) and Compiz / Compiz Fusion, along with some desktop docks. Can you guys help us out?

Many thanks,

Barney

[MezzaMezz]

I don't know if there is already something to manage wireless networks but, what about something like NDISWrapper to install windows network drivers?

I haven't installed Shift yet but I will be going from Ubuntu to Shift!

[markwolfe Veteran]

Since Neowin users sometimes want to use Shift to recover data from a drive that no longer boots, maybe adding in a couple of small tools from RIP would be a good idea. Namely the photorec and testdisk apps.

[utdarkviper]

Maybe some overclockers tools? Such as a temperature reader, O/C programs (how do you overclock with linux?), etc...

[DJD]

Avidemux

VLC Media player

[Borbus]

Killer apps for GNU/Linux is a funny one really... there are a lot less than you would expect. To get a higher number you would have to talk about killer free software apps, like Firefox and VLC Player. The thing is that the very nature of most free software means it is available for any OS including Windows. Even Compiz-Fusion should work with any X window system so it is not limited to just GNU/Linux.

So really... there are no killer apps for GNU/Linux imo. A killer app is a proprietary software thing and I wouldn't even like to see any killer apps for GNU/Linux.

[markwolfe Veteran]

Cinelerra is a great video editor, yet is not available in Windows.

[Barney T. Administrators]

Some of these posts reminded me... we need to make sure that our apps are true GNU and not licensed outside of OSS. Ndiswrapper is, unfortunately, one of those that is not Open Source...... :(

[markwolfe Veteran]

I think ndiswrapper is ok. It is just the Windows-specific .inf and driver stuff (which makes it work) that isn't freely re-distributable.

[Borbus]

Well they don't have to be GNU (as in part of the GNU project) they just have to be free software. ndiswrapper is free software (licensed under the GNU GPL) but the proprietary stuff they use must be downloaded by the user (and the user should be warned that they are non free really).

[rson451]

screen: you can't do day to day ssh'ing without this application. simply a necessity.

maybe a good chat client, say to connect to neowin irc for example. i've only used irssi and i know it's not the most user friendly one so maybe something more along the lines of xchat?

[Boktai1000]

Pizza Party!

http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/pizza_party/

[roadgeek9]

Since Neowin users sometimes want to use Shift to recover data from a drive that no longer boots, maybe adding in a couple of small tools from RIP would be a good idea. Namely the photorec and testdisk apps.

Wait, can Shift read NTFS drives? That reminds me, NTFS-3G (or whatever its called).

[Barney T. Administrators]

Wait, can Shift read NTFS drives? That reminds me, NTFS-3G (or whatever its called).

It can! :yes:

[p858snake]

Maybe a nice desktop calendar (similar to rainlendar2 on windows)

[Vegeta9001]

Would be nice to make it extremely geared towards programmers, so it's considered like THE programming distro. Put like Eclipse on it, Python, Perl, everything you can think of :)

[deniseweird]

A rather long request, but still. :p I would like to request this:

Emulators:

Snes9x GTK by BearOso

ZSNES

bsnes

Yabause

PCSX-df

mupen64plus

Gambatte

VBA-M

mednafen

Gens

Instant messaging:

emesene

amsn2 (It's very basic right now, but when it has evolved it would be nice to have. If you're releasing the next version very soon, you can skip this until the version after that.)

Languages:

Gjiten

A simple Input Method, wich works in all applications, along with a simple graphical tool to enable/disable it in all applications regardless of session. This is very important for me in order to be able to type in Japanese and Korean.

Multimedia:

SMPlayer

Kaffeine (When the KDE4 version comes)

Amarok2

The following request is maybe not considered "application", I am not sure, it's very important to me:

Support the latest OSS. This means both having an up to date package in the repositories, and making sure the whole system works nicely with it. Right now I am using Ubuntu, and these are the problems I have had so far:

HAL is incompatible with OSS 4.0 and above. Phonon is dependant on what information it gets from HAL. This means that there is no sound for me in any new applications from the KDE project. Maybe you could see how FreeBSD will solve this. (Or maybe they didn't upgrade to OSS4 yet?)

Gstreamer seems to be incompatible with OSS 4.1. I am not sure if this is OSS' fault or Gstreamer, but it needs a fix.

I had problems with portaudio when it had ALSA support compiled in, so I had to recompile it without ALSA support to use an application with it.

Almost all applications in Ubuntu's repositories are dependant on ALSA, even ones wich don't output sound. Please don't replicate this behaviour. I want to be able to remove everything that has anything to do with ALSA, and just forget about the whole thing.

-----------------------------------

This is what I can think of now. Having all this done would make this distro simply amazing! :D

[Jyang]

Sorry guys, I didn't have much time in this period and I couldn't participate to the 2 meetings because I had some important exams. I think Shift should have pacman + libalpm as a package manager and ABS and other tools for compiling stuff so you can create your own repository without using another distro's one. Also some scripts can be written to automatically detect hardware and configure everything(X included) when installing the system. IMHO it's better not to install Compiz or other compositing window manager because some need powerful hardware.

[bloodrain]

Maybe some overclockers tools? Such as a temperature reader, O/C programs (how do you overclock with linux?), etc...

you dont overclock through linux...

[4CxbqFxVnstmA Veteran]

I think ndiswrapper is ok. It is just the Windows-specific .inf and driver stuff (which makes it work) that isn't freely re-distributable.

Yes and ndiswrapper is actually on the Ubuntu live cd I believe.

Maybe a nice desktop calendar (similar to rainlendar2 on windows)

Another possibility is something like this Mac trick which I could imagine on the dropdown from the day/date/time in the upper right corner of a standard Ubuntu install. Gnome only has got the timezone bit below the calendar, but the other tabs would be cool to integrate with Evolution or tie them in with google calendar.

[Angel Blue01]

you dont overclock through linux...

That's odd, there are programs for OCing through Windows...

[markwolfe Veteran]

you dont overclock through linux...

:blink:

It seems that with more open and direct access to the hardware you have under Linux than you do under Windows, that you would be able to overclock.

It seems that there Linux overclockers from a quick google that led me here and here as the first two hits.

I've never much cared for "overclocking". If I wanted that little bit of extra performance, I would buy one step up on CPU, etc. In fact, since I didn't buy/use Windows, I guess you could say that I used that savings to get slightly better hardware. I guess that is my overclock. ;)

[MrA]

screen: you can't do day to day ssh'ing without this application. simply a necessity.

On that thought, how about an X11 equivalent of screen. Imagine being about to ssh into your server with X forwarding, launching an X11 app using the screen equivalent, then being able to detach the X11 connection and reattach it whenever you want to any X11 server. I remember a summer of code project to that, anyone heard anything about this?

[DGMurdockIII]

I thnk there shold not be as many apps included with a distro as get included there shold be one app that dose only add removing of software ( none that i now but would be very helpfull)

Have no more than two media player:

1. Songbird - http://getsongbird.com/

2. Vlc - http://www.videolan.org/

Instant Messenger:

Instantbird - http://www.instantbird.com/

Pidgin - http://pidgin.im/

Microsoft Publisher alternative

Scribes - http://scribes.sourceforge.net/

[deniseweird]

I thnk there shold not be as many apps included with a distro as get included there shold be one app that dose only add removing of software ( none that i now but would be very helpfull)

Have no more than two media player:

1. Songbird - http://getsongbird.com/

2. Vlc - http://www.videolan.org/

Instant Messenger:

Instantbird - http://www.instantbird.com/

Pidgin - http://pidgin.im/

Microsoft Publisher alternative

Scribes - http://scribes.sourceforge.net/

Actually, if I understood this topic right, it's not so much about what to have preinstalled, but rather what should be available in the repositories. The topic started should clarify this though.