Linux Software

I found there are so many excellent tools on linux, however, always forgotten by me time and time again. So, I start this page to record my favorite tools.

• Document Reader
  • CHM files: KChmPart plugin for konqueror, xchm (the only one i found print feature, still weaker than MS), gnochm.
  • MHT files: MAF plugin for firefox is good to open and save .MAF and .MHT files, unfortunately, it is only compatible with itself (not with MS). kmhtconvert is a tool convert mht to format understanded by konqueror, still in beta status.
  • PDF files: lots tools to read PDF files. pstill can concat multiple pdf files, extract pages from pdf, etc. It is free for educational purpose.
• System Tools
  • GMailFS: We all know gmail provide 1G to each user, can u imagine how to use the 1G space? huh, mount it as a local hardisk? Here it is.
• Document Editor
  • HTML editor: everybody may know quanta, there is a lighter WYSISWYG editor nvu
• Entertainment
  • Video Player: MPlayer is a movie player for Linux (runs on many other Unices, and non-x86 CPUs), Windows, Mac OS X. It plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, OGG/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies, too (without the avifile library). PS: must known, debian does not provide official repositories for mplayer for some reasons i donno know. It's OK, here is a repository you can find mplayer for debian:
    deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main
    To record streaming media get a URL of a stream and use command line strings like in the following examples:

        mplayer.exe -dumpstream URL
    

    After recording you will get the file stream.dump. You should rename it to .rm, .ra, .asf, .wmv or other format you are using. MPlayer supports HTTP, RTSP, MMS protocols to record Windows Media, RealVideo/RealAudio, QuickTime Video Recommended free MPlayer package with GUI for Windows: MPlayer + frontend by Gabor Szecsi (When using it enter your URL in a Media file editbox and "-dumpstream" (without quotes) in MPlayer Extra parameters editbox, then click "Start" button to start recording process). For other tools, plz read here.
• Anti-Virus
  so far, i do not know who care anti-virus software on linux, although i download one just now: f-prot
• Miscs
  • springgraph, graphviz: Springgraph is a small tool that will read in a .dot file description of a graph, which, for each node, specifies its name and which other nodes it is connected to, and then renders a graph; e.g., apt-rdepends -d springgraph >1.dot; springgraph <1.dot>1.png; will generate dependence graph of springgraph binary package. Graphviz is much more comprehensive than springgraph, and generated graph is more beautiful.
• Graphic Editor
  • IPE: Ipe is a drawing editor for creating figures in PDF or (encapsulated) Postscript format. It supports making small figures for inclusion into LaTeX-documents as well as making multi-page PDF presentations that can be shown on-line with Acrobat Reader. So, what's the difference between IPE and xfig? I love IPE much, as it integrate latex macros seamlessly, which means u can draw tables, write formula in a convenient way (which cannot be done by xifg so far, i think).
  • QtiPlot: I used it to do my thesis graphs
  • More...更多
  • Must know, none of them has no weakness, e.g. IPE cannot import eps and pre-defined items. Another problem is although most of them can export to eps/pdf, they cannot import eps and pdf with fine effect. To combine them is a good choice, pstoedit is such a good util that can convert eps/pdf to vector format (xfig, dia, etc.) that can be used to do this.
• Development
  • gnome source navigator: have similar features as source insight on windows, of cz, it is totally free. u can also get all reference of a function, what the function refers to, etc.
• A quite old windows alternative software table: The table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux.