• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Best free obscure software

For Linux, I've discovered that most of the GUI apps shipped with KDE do the job, but the quality varies from poor (RPM manager) to outstanding (Amarok).

For viewing pictures, the old-as-the-hills (not updated in 10(!) years) 'xv' is still better than Kuickshow; it has better key bindings and more tools.

For file management, nothing beats the Midnight Commander ('mc'). Although there's a GUI version, I still use the terminal/shell version. Lightning fast, and its ability to tag a bunch of files and then use the '%t' macro to insert the names of those tagged files into a command line means you can do some complex stuff with a bunch of files at once rather easily.

And for the system administrator in you, there's lsof (list open files.) Not only can it tell you the name of every file every application currently has open, it can also tell you about IPC controls, shared memory segments, and IP addresses, too. Chances are you got a copy with your Linux distribution.
 
Blue Mountain said:
And for the system administrator in you, there's lsof (list open files.) Not only can it tell you the name of every file every application currently has open, it can also tell you about IPC controls, shared memory segments, and IP addresses, too. Chances are you got a copy with your Linux distribution.
Click to expand...

I've caught myself typing that command in the Windows command line a bunch of times. :)

Is there a Win32 equivalent for the command line (I know the GUI, but it's buried in the MMC)?
 
ExplorerXP - Have you ever tried to move large quantities of files with Windows Explorer only to discover that the computer choked? With ExplorerXP you can manage your files easy and reliable. The interface is far better than Windows Explorer.

µTorrent - A lightweight yet powerful bit torrent client.

HJSplit - For splitting and joining files.
 
Which definition of "free" are we using today? Anyway...

SIW Good tool for identifying hardware components of a system and recovering license keys, etc.

7-zip is one step better than IzArc because it's open-source (though I've found one instance where it's failed and WinRAR worked)

CDBurner XP is a good, well, CD burner tool.

Crimson Editor is my favourite text file editor.
 
I prefer Notepad++ for an editor. Open source, a "portable" USB version is available, and has pretty much all the features of Crimson Editor, as far as I can tell. Multiple views into the same file, even.
 
ShowMe said:
Foxit

If you're sick of the bloated overhead of Adobe Reader this program is a free alternative.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader_2/down_reader.htm
Click to expand...
Even better: Sumatra PDF. Open source, and comes in a portable version (i.e. runs from a USB drive without changing the host machine).

ETA: Foxit may have more features, if I recall correctly, but they are selling the more advanced features, particularly for commercial usage. (IrfanView has the same issue: it is not free for commercial use, but I keep finding people at work using it without a license.)
 
Last edited:
I do not think it particularly obscure, but just in case, since someone mentioned an astronomy program:
kstars: http://edu.kde.org/kstars/.

It has recently been ported to OS X (where I have tried it and it is beatiful) and Windows (sorry, can't test it, don't touch the stuff).

In fact, KDE4 has been ported to OS X and MS Windows, so now you have heaps of very good free/libre software. Try it.
 
grmcdorman said:
I prefer Notepad++ for an editor. Open source, a "portable" USB version is available, and has pretty much all the features of Crimson Editor, as far as I can tell. Multiple views into the same file, even.
Click to expand...

CE is open source, and can view separate parts of a document in their own windows. And it'll fit on a floppy. For some reason I like the interface better than n++, but that's just personal preference. I'm just pointing out that there's not really much of a difference.
 
Seriously, though, most Windows editors like Notepad++ or Crimson Editor don't compare well to Emacs or vi. Emacs and vi are usually strictly keyboard-based (vanilla vi, in particular). The above two editors are GUI apps, so they have menus (including context menus), tabs, scrollbars; the whole GUI thing. So, for the most part, it'd be an apples-to-oranges comparision.
 
grmcdorman said:
Seriously, though, most Windows editors like Notepad++ or Crimson Editor don't compare well to Emacs or vi. Emacs and vi are usually strictly keyboard-based (vanilla vi, in particular). The above two editors are GUI apps, so they have menus (including context menus), tabs, scrollbars; the whole GUI thing. So, for the most part, it'd be an apples-to-oranges comparision.
Click to expand...

Well yes, but emacs comes with all most all of that enabled by default nowadays, and the same holds for the prettier vi(m)s, gvim or cream. And despite how nice emacs is there are occasions when I'd rather be coding in visual studio, so I wondered what these young upstarts had going for them ;).
 
Exact Audio Copy Reads audio cds very carefully. :) Only way some of my more scratched cds can be read. Saves the data as a wave file, but can also convert it to flac or mp3.

REACT2 Automates some aspects of EAC, and allows the original file from EAC to be converted into multiple formats, such as flac and mp3, at the same time EAC is originally run. (there are other (free) programs have been created to work with EAC, but I haven't used them).

Also, found this recently (while trying to organize my music collection).
MixMeister BPM Analyzer. Calculates the BPM and adds it to the file's tags. Works well with mp3s, but doesn't work with flac. :(
 
Last edited:
Rrose Selavy said:
Just found this the other day, if you like to browse pic galleries you will find it awesome...possibly a way netbrowsing is going to go.

http://www.piclens.com/

Firefox add on here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579

-
Click to expand...
Piclens breaks a lot of other funtionality. They're "known issues" that haven't been resolved. I forget what blocks I ran up against, but I know that some websites wouldn't work at all with that plugin installed. Oh, yeah, it breaks scrollbars occasionally and breaks login scripts.
 
Jekyll said:
What's it like compared to the old school editors like emacs?

(I'm just asking not trolling...)
Click to expand...

To a degree, as noted, it's a case of apples and oranges, but there are comparisons to be made.

Mind you, I couldn't be considered a regular user of either vi or emacs, so this is purely my opinion.

Notepad++ stacks up pretty well in my opinion. It can store macros, replace against regex etc.

It does miss some of the vi-like power commands , but mostly that's down to usage and familiarity, the only real benefit is in terms of keystrokes.

ie. hitting 'dd' isn't a million miles away from 'Home Shift-Down Delete', and the latter becomes more useful when you want to delete more extensibely while retaining more selectivity.

Big advantages to me are the tabbed interface, cloned views (show file in more than one view), context highlighting and open/ending tag tree display.

Depends on what you use an editor for really I guess.

If I'm knocking up a simple web page then I'll just use vi or nano on my web server. For larger projects I'll use Notepad++ ... horses for courses.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom