Whats that one app you can't live without?

[Kevin Carter]

In an effort to once again con Seth into showing me how to use one of the cool apps he uses and to come up for future meeting ideas, I ask:

Whats that one app you can't live without?

The idea being we'd like to have a meeting where everyone shows off their favorite Linux or open source program or one they think is cool or a new one they just discovered. It can be a command line program, or a GUI app, or even a webapp like wordpress or phpbb. Just a 10-20 minute demonstration about why you like and what it does/some of its awesome features.

So if you have an app in mind and want to show it off at the next meeting (Aug 31st) send a reply saying what it is.

-Kevin-

[Seth House]

On Jul 29, 2:10 pm, Kevin Carter <cart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> send a reply saying what it is.

As requested, I'll talk about mpd (Music Player Daemon).

[Aaron Toponce]

On 07/29/2010 02:10 PM, Kevin Carter wrote:
> So if you have an app in mind and want to show it off at the next
> meeting (Aug 31st) send a reply saying what it is.

Unfortunately, that's one week after fall semester has started at WSU
and UofU, so I will be unable to attend. As a result, I'll share my
must-haves here on the list.

Rather than a single program, I can't live without a certain suite of
software. Whenever I do a new installation, I always make sure the
following programs are installed:

* Git- First and foremost, I make sure that Git is installed. I maintain
all of my dot configs in a personal Git repository, as well at /etc/
configs, and other files I need. I usually get this setup first, then
worry about installing and setting up the rest.

* ZSH- Bash is for wimps. Real men use ZSH. I've blogged about this
over, and over, so if you want to know why I use ZSH, check out
http://pthree.org/?s=zsh.

* GNU Screen- Not only do I use this personally, but professionally as
well. I run Irssi behind it, which is probably it's biggest reason for
me, but I also use it at work to connect to serial consoles, such as
Cisco switches, SANs, etc. As you might have guessed, I've blogged about
GNU Screen quite a bit too: http://pthree.org/?s=gnu+screen

* Irssi- A must have for any IRC junkie, such as myself. I've been
connected to IRC one way or the other for the past 8 years. It wasn't
until about 5 years ago a friend of mine showed my Irssi. I've tried
other IRC clients, but I always fall back to the sheer, raw power of
Irssi. As with ZSH, I've blogged about this a fair amount as well:
http://pthree.org/?s=irssi

* Bitlbee- Lastly, but definitely not least, I use connect to a local
running instance of Bitlbee with Irssi. I only have a Jabber account, so
this might be overkill, but it's enough to "dent" to identi.ca with
their XMPP bot, "tweet" to Twitter with a 3rd party XMPP bot, chat with
Facebook friends, and so on. I'm joined to many Jabber MUCs (multi-user
chat rooms) with it. Of course, http://pthree.org/?s=bitlbee

Aside from Bitlbee and Irssi, which run on my main server, everything
else gets installed from a basic script that I run on every new install
of Debian GNU/Linux. I only do a _very_ minimal install of the Debian
base, then install only exactly what I want. Here's the relevant part of
that script, and my "must-haves":

sudo aptitude install abiword chromium-browser clusterssh
flashplugin-nonfree git-core gmrun gnumeric htop iceweasel ncurses-base
openbox openssh-server python-docutils rst2pdf screen sysv-rc-conf
tango-icon-theme vim wicd xfce4 xfce4-icon-theme xfce4-terminal
xscreensaver-data-extra zsh zsh-doc

I also remove some bloat that is unnecessary for myself in the same
script. Might be of use for someone else:

sudo aptitude purge dasher gnome-accessibility gok nano orca
xserver-xorg-video-{all, apm, ark, ati, chips, cirrus, fbdev, i128,
i740, intel, mach64, mga, neomagic, nv, openchrome, r128, radeon,
radeonhd, rendition, s3, s3virge, savage, siliconmotion, sis, sisusb,
tdfx, trident, tseng, v4l, voodoo}

--
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O O O . O . . O O O O . O O O

[Kevin Carter]

After a bit of debate on what I would present, I've decided to show off the command line utility I use to download podcasts. And if time allows maybe a couple other command line apps.

So that puts the list as:
Seth: mpd
Kevin: podcatcher

Who else would like to present something?

-Kevin-

[Christian Horne]

come on, surely someone will mention irssi
the blendmaster

--
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IRC: #oalug on irc.freenode.net

[Aaron Toponce]

On Tue, Aug 03, 2010 at 12:14:57PM -0600, Christian Horne wrote:
> come on, surely someone will mention irssi

You must not read the list very faithfully. Someone already has. :)

[Kevin Carter]

So far the only presentations we have are:
Seth: mpd
Kevin: podcatcher

Anybody else have something they'd like to show off?

-Kevin-