LinuxLinks has kindly given me space for a semi-regular blog about open source, Linux, Windows and whatever else catches my attention. The views and prejudices are my own.
There’s a particular annoyance in looking up an old Linux favourite and finding installation instructions for a distribution you stopped using years ago. You remember exactly why you want the program. Getting it running again is another matter.
FSlint comes to mind. My home directory collects a crazy number of duplicate files, especially after moving backups between machines. FSlint offered an easy way to examine them, alongside empty directories and broken links, before deciding what to remove. Files with different names could still be identical. Being able to review them together was reassuring when I had kept three copies. Its Python 2 and GTK 2 dependencies eventually made it awkward to keep using.
I’d also happily make room for GreenWithEnvy. Having NVIDIA temperatures, clocks, fan curves and power limits together was useful, particularly when you wanted to quieten a noisy card. Overclocking was optional. A quieter machine was a good enough reason to have it installed, and the graphs helped you see what was happening as you adjusted things. Its maintainer switched to AMD and could no longer test it. Fair enough. That’s the sort of ordinary change in someone’s life that can bring a useful project that depends on one maintainer to a halt.
GNOME Do appealed to anyone who resented opening menus for the same jobs all day. A few letters could find an application, document or contact, with actions available from the keyboard. Docky started as one of its interfaces before becoming a separate project. Launchers, running windows, a clock, perhaps a weather docklet: it was an appealing way to arrange a desktop.
GNOME Pie put circular menus around the pointer. You moved towards the right slice to launch an application, open a file or trigger a keyboard shortcut. Different pies could hold different sets of actions, each summoned with its own shortcut. That saved a trip to whichever corner you’d put the usual launcher in. It looked unusual, but having familiar actions in predictable positions made sense.
Beagle was useful when you could remember a phrase but had forgotten where you’d seen it. It searched inside documents, email and conversations. That’s a much more forgiving approach to finding things than expecting everyone to maintain an immaculate folder structure.
I have some affection for attempts to stop everything becoming a browser tab. GNOME Twitch brought streams and chat into a desktop client. The built-in chat mattered. Watching a stream is often as much about the conversation around it as the video, and keeping both together made the application feel complete. MellowPlayer supplied media-key controls and notifications for streaming music services. Being able to stop the music without first finding the right tab is a small pleasure.
Sometimes you just want to put the radio on. Gradio let you browse stations and keep favourites. Its developer eventually started afresh with Shortwave. FeedReader had a similar story. Its RSS account synchronisation and desktop reading interface made following a collection of sites manageable. You could work through new articles at your own pace, mark things as read and leave the rest for another day. Its author later started the separate NewsFlash rewrite. I’m glad those ideas carried on, even if the original applications didn’t.
Which Linux application do you miss, and what did it do that you still haven’t quite replaced?
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