The Tech Valley Bundle is a series of articles in which we review the best applications available for the GNU Linux operating system in specific fields, to help users make the best choices based on their needs and what suits them. This series will be continuously updated to follow the developments annually.
We start in this article with our bundle of the best essential applications.
Our selection criteria:
Due to the diversity of work environments (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, etc.), our options had to be multiple in each specialty instead of just mentioning one application. We have always been keen to recommend free and open-source applications to the greatest extent possible, but our list in the end included several proprietary (non-free) programs, leaving the final choice to the reader.
We excluded applications that did not receive any updates during the past year (2015), and we tried to have the programs available in the official repositories of the most famous distributions so that it remains easy to install them and get their updates continuously without any problems.
In the end, each of us has his personal preferences and different needs, so we hope that you will share with us your suggestions and opinions about what we mentioned here.
yield:
Application launcher:
Using the keyboard to launch applications and open files will greatly increase your efficiency, and will make the workflow while using the system more streamlined. With a few keystrokes on the keyboard, you will launch the application you want; instead of searching for it in the menus. You can also easily open a file that may require accessing it through the file manager, sometimes three or four folders. The famous Gnome-do
application has not received any updates for two years, so we recommend Synapse as the best launcher. On the other hand, Gnome, KDE, and Unity environments come with built-in default launchers that do the job, we recommend sticking with them. Users of lightweight environments (such as Openbox) can also try Dmenu. Read
Text editors:
Text editors are one of the most discussed and preferred programs in the programming community, and despite the many options available here, we still recommend the default programs that come with the work environments ( gedit in Gnome, Kate in KDE) as ideal programs that include a wide range of features in addition to the possibility of expanding them through add-ons and extensions.
The most popular features available are: syntax highlighting, syntax highlighting, code autocompletion, displaying multiple documents in columns, searching and replacing a group of files on the hard disk, etc.
Work environments that do not come with gedit can use the wonderful Geany. For those who want to get something more powerful, we recommend Eclipse or the traditional editors Vim, Emacs .
Office Supplies Set:
When it comes to processing and editing tools, there is no competitor to the LibreOffice package, which comes by default with the most popular distributions and various work environments. The package includes word processing tools, spreadsheets, presentations, charts, mathematical equations, and finally databases.
Internet:
Browser:
Comparing browsers would require a separate detailed topic, but we can summarize that the free and open-source software community and those interested in privacy settings will choose Firefox , while those who prefer optimal performance will side with Chrome. Chrome
offers a built-in Flash extension with Arabic language support, extensions are installed without the need to restart the browser, and each tab is separated into an independent process in the processor to prevent the entire program from crashing in the event of a problem with one of the tabs, in addition to being the fastest browser (according to the recent measurement conducted by PCWorld magazine and several metrics) and finally the best performance with Google services. Those who want a “compromise” can try using the open-source Chromium, especially since it still supports 32-bit processors, which Chrome has stopped supporting, and is officially available in several repositories.
Chat:
Pidgin is still the best chat application that can be recommended for use, as it supports a long list of protocols and many features, in addition to its rich library of add-ons, such as support for OTR encryption between messengers, which is one of the highest levels of protection that can be provided when communicating with friends.
In any case, if you do not use any of the Pidgin add-ons, you can stick with the default programs in your work environment; Empathy in GNOME, Kopte in KDE.
Read also: Communicate within a local network using Pidgin.
Download:
There are a large number of downloading tools available for GNU Linux, but there is no application that can solve the problem of slow connection in most countries of the Arab world, so searching for a program that does what the network itself does not provide is a waste of time.
We chose the Downloadthemall add-on as the best download manager for Firefox, in terms of speed and resuming downloads, in addition to both Uget and Kget, the default managers in the GNOME and KDE interfaces.
The torrent download managers that come with various distributions are usually more than enough as well, but if you want something more professional and rich in features, you can try Deluge, written in Python, which can be used with the GTK interface, or via the command line, or even from a web interface.
File sync:
Despite the dominance of the file syncing sector by Dropbox, the free application OwnCloud has come a long way in six years of development and has become able to compete with merit, especially with the ninth version approaching completion, which will bring significant improvements to file sharing and teamwork, in addition to high encryption and protection capabilities.
You can get OwnCloud to install it on your own server, and you can also get a free subscription from the service providers, the full list is here. Among the providers are the Swiss site Woelkli, which offers 500 MB to subscribers to the free plan, as well as the German site blaucloud, whose free subscription includes 2 GB of storage space.
Multimedia:
multimedia player
All GNU Linux distributions come with different software to play video and audio, but most users are looking for an application with broader and more comprehensive options, and this is the category that will enjoy with the famous VLC player, which supports a very wide range of audio and video formats built-in and without the need to install any external libraries. The application is available in the repositories of all distributions and comes by default with Debian and others.
For those who want to try something else, we recommend the Smplayer application.
Audio Library Manager
Many of us today have a large music library on our devices, which makes it difficult to browse and view its contents through a traditional file manager. This is where audio library managers come into the index and play all the audio files on your device, in addition to providing other services such as listening to Internet radio, connecting to music platforms via the web (such as Soundcloud), and other features.
In this category, we choose Ryhthmbox in Gnome and Amarok in KDE.
Image Library Manager
If you are a fan of taking and collecting photos and are looking for the best applications to manage your large digital library, we recommend the virtual photo library managers, Shotwell in Gnome, and digiKam in KDE. They contain many features, even more than you can imagine at first glance, including support for more than 300 RAW formats, image comparison, tagging, the ability to publish and share with social networks and global photo platforms (such as Flickr), and more.
Image processing
Gimp is considered the best competitor to Photoshop owned by Adobe, and offers very wide capabilities and abilities in processing and outputting images (not designing from scratch), in addition to a huge library of add-ons and filters that can be installed to the program to expand its capabilities. It is noteworthy that version 2.10 of Gimp is expected to be released in the coming months, carrying many long-awaited features and characteristics.
Various service programs
Terminal emulators:
Terminal emulators are used almost daily by GNU Linux users, and virtual emulators meet most of the needs in terms of customization and settings modification, but the problem remains that the GNOME terminal does not support the Arabic language, so we recommend an alternative to it, Mlterm, which supports Arabic (and many other languages by default). We also recommend the Guake
applications for GNOME environments and Yakuake for KDE, which are sliding terminals that can be called immediately and quickly by pressing a shortcut on the keyboard to slide from the top, giving it the required commands, and leaving it to continue executing them in the background. We also recommend Terminator as the best terminal emulator in terms of customization and capabilities. Read also: What is a good terminal emulator in Linux?
Dictionaries
One of the most needed tools for writers and translators today is a dictionary program that supports multiple capabilities and options, such as translating foreign words when selected, spelling words, supporting the largest number of dictionary formats, supporting the translation from online dictionaries, etc. These features and more are available in the Goldendict application, which we chose as the best dictionary manager for GNU Linux desktops.
