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Some Linux apps are small wonders
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Comments (16)
Gotta love that opera...
Firefox is my main browser at the office (using a client's Windows workstation) and konqueror is my main browser at home, with forays to Firefox, but I still find Opera can render pages that knocks the other two for a loop.
Just out of curiosity, is that still the case since those little Firefox hacks came out?
Last time I used Opera it was definitely a lot faster than anything else but IE was still on v4.something.
Last time I used Opera it was definitely a lot faster than anything else but IE was still on v4.something.
SFN, the little Firefox hacks (I suppose you're referring to the use of about:config to let the browser make more than 1 connection to a webpage at the same time) are standard things in Opera, that can simply be found under Tools > Preferences > Network. No need for a hack there, it's in the GUI already :) . So Opera can easily be made even faster, even more easily than Firefox :) .
It strikes me that when it comes to innovation in browsing, Opera has always been in lead. Tabbed browsing: Opera began it. Mouse gestures (I cannot live without them anymore): Opera began there too. Of course, you *can* accomplish the same things with Firefox, but not out of the box. You first need to download a few plug-ins, and then change quite a few preferences, just to get those two functionalities to run like they do in Opera out of the box. And even then, you see that those functionalities are just "tacked on". They don't feel as streamlined as they do in Opera. Don't get me wrong: Firefox is a great browser, which I use in the rare case that a page I want to see doesn't render well in Opera (Opera is probably the strictest browser there is when it comes to standards. As a result, there's sometimes the odd page that doesn't render well in Opera but does in Firefox), but out of the box it wants too much to look like an IE clone (a secure and standards-compliant one, but still with a clone) rather than have its own identity, like Opera dares to do.
All in all, seeing how much functionality is packed in such a small download, and how quick the browser remains even with all the features that have been added, the only drawback I find Opera has is that it isn't Open Source. It brings an uncertainty in Opera's future that isn't nice. One depends on the good will of the developpers. But given the behaviour of the people behind Opera so far, it seems they will keep on making a great, secure, standards-compliant, fast browser which is addictive, once you've past the initial learning stage. And I still hope they'll jump on the Open Source bandwagon someday.
All in all, Opera is the only piece of closed source software I prefer over its open source equivalent. Given how much I am in favour of Free Software, that says something about the quality of the program :) . Firefox is a great browser, with great extensibility, but however hard I try to switch, I keep coming back to Opera. It just feels more natural :) .
And yes, I'm using Opera at this very moment of course :) .
It strikes me that when it comes to innovation in browsing, Opera has always been in lead. Tabbed browsing: Opera began it. Mouse gestures (I cannot live without them anymore): Opera began there too. Of course, you *can* accomplish the same things with Firefox, but not out of the box. You first need to download a few plug-ins, and then change quite a few preferences, just to get those two functionalities to run like they do in Opera out of the box. And even then, you see that those functionalities are just "tacked on". They don't feel as streamlined as they do in Opera. Don't get me wrong: Firefox is a great browser, which I use in the rare case that a page I want to see doesn't render well in Opera (Opera is probably the strictest browser there is when it comes to standards. As a result, there's sometimes the odd page that doesn't render well in Opera but does in Firefox), but out of the box it wants too much to look like an IE clone (a secure and standards-compliant one, but still with a clone) rather than have its own identity, like Opera dares to do.
All in all, seeing how much functionality is packed in such a small download, and how quick the browser remains even with all the features that have been added, the only drawback I find Opera has is that it isn't Open Source. It brings an uncertainty in Opera's future that isn't nice. One depends on the good will of the developpers. But given the behaviour of the people behind Opera so far, it seems they will keep on making a great, secure, standards-compliant, fast browser which is addictive, once you've past the initial learning stage. And I still hope they'll jump on the Open Source bandwagon someday.
All in all, Opera is the only piece of closed source software I prefer over its open source equivalent. Given how much I am in favour of Free Software, that says something about the quality of the program :) . Firefox is a great browser, with great extensibility, but however hard I try to switch, I keep coming back to Opera. It just feels more natural :) .
And yes, I'm using Opera at this very moment of course :) .
When the community edition of Xandros was released, I tried it and Opera was the default browser. Of course it was the ad supported no cost version, but the ads weren't very intrusive for my tastes.
I was getting the hang of Opera, but once it "wigged out" and started auto-connecting to some Opera site. It was awhile ago, so my memory of the event isn't very reliable, but 'top' showed a bunch of opera processes going off. Freaked me out, so I killed it and switched browsers.
Xandros was really slow on my machine for some reason, so I ended up switching to something else, but it ran fine on my co-worker's lappie. Go figure.
I've never tried mouse gestures. I remember scoffing at tabs - what an arse I turned out to be on that one! I should probably still be using Windows.
I was getting the hang of Opera, but once it "wigged out" and started auto-connecting to some Opera site. It was awhile ago, so my memory of the event isn't very reliable, but 'top' showed a bunch of opera processes going off. Freaked me out, so I killed it and switched browsers.
Xandros was really slow on my machine for some reason, so I ended up switching to something else, but it ran fine on my co-worker's lappie. Go figure.
I've never tried mouse gestures. I remember scoffing at tabs - what an arse I turned out to be on that one! I should probably still be using Windows.
Maybe the connections were for the ad. But I agree it can be frightening, and that's why I said that the only drawback of Opera is that it isn't Open Source. So far since I've begun using Opera it has behaved nicely, but one needs to stay vigilant.
You should really try mouse gestures. I use them also on Firefox (the few times I use it) and Thunderbird, and I surprise myself trying to use them on programs not supporting them ;) . I can tell you, they are addictive :) .
As for tabs, well... hehe...
PS: A site for Open Source news where Firefox isn't in the dictionary when Thunderbird and Opera are? ;)
You should really try mouse gestures. I use them also on Firefox (the few times I use it) and Thunderbird, and I surprise myself trying to use them on programs not supporting them ;) . I can tell you, they are addictive :) .
As for tabs, well... hehe...
PS: A site for Open Source news where Firefox isn't in the dictionary when Thunderbird and Opera are? ;)
xterm
I've taken a liking to the classical (Dickey) xterm. gnome-terminal is good, but it's big... and it has this bug when you're trying to scroll up. One line at a time, repainting the whole screen every time. Xterm is snappy by comparison.
I found that it's easy to configure xterm to use anti-aliased, scalable fonts. Just use the faceName/faceType resouces. lucidasanstypewriter-14 works great.
With the newest xterm, version 192, even font scaling, with control and the right mouse button, works too. And you can even install this rpm under the older FC2.
Only terms-in-tabs are missing.
Only terms-in-tabs are missing.
rxvt isn't too bad either...
When I'm stuck in dll hell, I've found recently that using XFce, rxvt and some custom programming make life extremely livable.
KDE works under Cygwin, but one of the effects of all of that thick OO programming is the slowing of my already gummed-up laptop (currently with a gig of ram so I can run vmware).
xterms and rxvt's snap right onto the screen in comparison. It's like you're almost on a unix box, except for the window around your window.
Full screen vmware sessions are almost good enough too, except that my laptop goes into power consumption overdrive and If I turned the darn thing over I could grill waffles on it.
--FeriCyde
When I'm stuck in dll hell, I've found recently that using XFce, rxvt and some custom programming make life extremely livable.
KDE works under Cygwin, but one of the effects of all of that thick OO programming is the slowing of my already gummed-up laptop (currently with a gig of ram so I can run vmware).
xterms and rxvt's snap right onto the screen in comparison. It's like you're almost on a unix box, except for the window around your window.
Full screen vmware sessions are almost good enough too, except that my laptop goes into power consumption overdrive and If I turned the darn thing over I could grill waffles on it.
--FeriCyde
Martin,
I have the same issue with gnome-terminal. It is particularly painful when using mutt and scrolling up your email - it's just too slow.
I'm now using xterms, as well, and I have tabs!! Using fluxbox for my windowmanager, it has built in tabs support. Every application is tabable.
Also, I can use Super (Windows key)-Tab to cycle between the tabs of the window that has the focus. It's great!!
Dave
I have the same issue with gnome-terminal. It is particularly painful when using mutt and scrolling up your email - it's just too slow.
I'm now using xterms, as well, and I have tabs!! Using fluxbox for my windowmanager, it has built in tabs support. Every application is tabable.
Also, I can use Super (Windows key)-Tab to cycle between the tabs of the window that has the focus. It's great!!
Dave
About "small" apps -- who else is using xfig? It looks and feels so old-fashioned, a bit like driving a T-Ford, but for what _I_ am doing, it beats the pants off the competition... which isn't bad either (inkscape, skencil anyone?). Even though the UI can be a pain, precise as it is.
xfig is the only vector graphics application that allows LaTeX embedding in an integrated way, comfortably. And it has a legible, documented text file format. I have tried other vector graphic editors, but come back to this one. Like, last week when I needed to construct an HTML image map on a group photo from a meeting.
Unfortunately on FC2/3 it has this annoying bug of entering the digits the wrong way around when writing into a "spinner" box. In fact it is an Xaw bug, and can be worked around by dynamically linking to Xaw3d instead... easily done on-the-fly by placing a symlink to the Xaw3d lib in a directory and then making LD_LIBRARY_PATH point to it. It even looks better :-)
- Martin
xfig is the only vector graphics application that allows LaTeX embedding in an integrated way, comfortably. And it has a legible, documented text file format. I have tried other vector graphic editors, but come back to this one. Like, last week when I needed to construct an HTML image map on a group photo from a meeting.
Unfortunately on FC2/3 it has this annoying bug of entering the digits the wrong way around when writing into a "spinner" box. In fact it is an Xaw bug, and can be worked around by dynamically linking to Xaw3d instead... easily done on-the-fly by placing a symlink to the Xaw3d lib in a directory and then making LD_LIBRARY_PATH point to it. It even looks better :-)
- Martin
martin -- gimp has a plugin to make an image map from an image -- did you ever try it (I don't use them so I have no idea how good it is).
Paul: yes I know. The funny thing is, I was shopping around for a separate Linux image map application for many hours (they even sell those for money!) before finding this out (and about xfig). The general looking for his horse while sitting on it, and all that.
I did try the Gimp plug-in, and yes it works. Only, like xfig, it forces you to enter an HREF, which for _this_ occasion I wasn't interested in. And it makes an ALT tag obligatory, which is understandable in general (accessibility) but what I wanted/needed was the TITLE tag, which is not provided. Xfig has similar behaviour.
Look at the group picture on
http://www.nkg.fi/current/Bornholm2004.html
to see what I did.
- Martin
I did try the Gimp plug-in, and yes it works. Only, like xfig, it forces you to enter an HREF, which for _this_ occasion I wasn't interested in. And it makes an ALT tag obligatory, which is understandable in general (accessibility) but what I wanted/needed was the TITLE tag, which is not provided. Xfig has similar behaviour.
Look at the group picture on
http://www.nkg.fi/current/Bornholm2004.html
to see what I did.
- Martin
Very cool! Does fig do it exactly as you wanted? If not you could use what the gimp gives you and some awk code to clean it up (if you ever need to do something like this again).
Regardless, that's a neat way to point out names -- I've got to get into using mapping more, it's too nifty...
--Fericyde
Regardless, that's a neat way to point out names -- I've got to get into using mapping more, it's too nifty...
--Fericyde
I like fiddling around with rxvt, will i have my scrollbars on the left or the right today?
Sounds pretty sad and it is :)
Sounds pretty sad and it is :)
Koriel, sometimes the most boring things are the most important things....
http://voidville.com/desktop.png
Here's a shot of my boring desktop (XFce and Rxvts) -- oh, and this is Cygwin's X server running on top of XP.
http://voidville.com/desktop.png
Here's a shot of my boring desktop (XFce and Rxvts) -- oh, and this is Cygwin's X server running on top of XP.
Paul -- no, xfig does it in about the same way as Gimp. You get a file, but have to do a post-cleanup before inserting it anywhere.
What I got had the obligatory href= tag, which in vim I simply replaced with s/href/title/.
(In other words, these aren't _clickable_ image maps :-)
- Martin
- Martin
About some more, not necessarily _small_ apps, but little gems that are not widely known:
- unison, for bidirectional file synchronisation
- ssh port forwarding, to get into places no firewall wants you to go
- pstoedit, a ps/eps to xfig format converter
- ssh port forwarding, to get into places no firewall wants you to go
- pstoedit, a ps/eps to xfig format converter
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