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vim - Currently my favorite editor -- vim is
hard to master, but the steep learning curve brings rewards in the end. The
relative lack of key chording is another large bonus; chorded keystrokes are a
great way to end up with RSI, and are the reason I don't use emacs anymore.
Vim also has superior regex integration, which is huge.
mplayer - The best video player program.
zsh - Powerful shell for *NIX adepts. My
.zshrc may be a reasonable place to start.
PuTTY
- This program is the best ssh/telnet client, essential for those forced to use a win32 machine for real work.
Launchy - Open source keystroke launcher
for Linux and Win32. I hate the windows UI and am used to running programs by
typing in names. Launchy has smart indexing of start menu shortcuts and
matches input by string context, sorting by frequency of use. It, along with
PuTTY, makes Windows bearable. It now works on Linux as well, and it certainly beats root window menus for launching programs.
fvwm - fvwm is no doubt the best window
manager I have ever used. It's certainly come a long way since 1997. Fast,
insanely configurable, and well-written,
it has no real competition if you don't mind editing text config files.
Check my .fvwm2rc for a start, or
check taviso's site for even more fvwm information.
Firefox - My GUI browser
of choice. Make sure you get good extensions, as they are the strength of the
browser.
Git or Mercurial - Advanced revision
control systems. Both are blazing fast and allow for distributed
development.
bitlbee - An excellent bidirectional IRC
to instant messenger (Jabber|ICQ|AIM|Yahoo|MSN) gateway. Indispensable for
those folks that absolutely despise instant messenging clients, such as
myself.
Objective Caml - An excellent and
practical statically typed functional language with support for
imperative programming.
Python - Well-designed and clean script
language. It's also become quite fast compared to other scripting languages
in recent years.
Chicken Scheme - Very clever Scheme implementation that compiles to C. It has a REPL and package system as well.
maxima - Free CAS system.
octave - Free MATLAB-like environment,
particularly useful for matrix-heavy numerical math. I use general purpose
languages for heavy numerical work, but octave is handy for quick one-shot
calculations.
dosbox - Dosbox emulates old DOS PCs on modern hardware; it is excellent for running those old DOS games that will not work on modern OSes or machines.
links
- The One True lightweight CLI/GUI webbrowser. Vastly superior to the
more well-known lynx.
Adblock Plus - Customizable extension
that blocks ads. Essential.
Customize Google - Allows
you to strip unnecessary things from Google's services.
GMail Manager - If you
use GMail, this extension will allow you to check up on multiple accounts.
Tab Mix Plus - Fixes
Firefox's tab handling to be sane and allows real session save and restore.
Essential for FF2.0.
It's All Text! -
Lets you use your favorite text editor for edit boxes. It's particularly nice
when using webmail.
Classic Compact - Theme
that doesn't waste space and looks just pretty enough to not cause your eyes to
bleed. In other words, the ideal Firefox theme.
The Tech Report - Great computer-related news and information site.
EurekAlert! - Excellent site for science news.
Xbit Laboratories - Excellent hardware
review site. Probably the only hardware site not afraid to pull out circuit schematics.
Silent PC Review - Best site for information on quiet PCs.
Phoronix - Hardware reviews that focus on Linux systems.
Dan's Data - Interesting hardware
and gadget review site.
LKML - Light reading for when you need to kill
time at a PC. That is, after you've read it for a few years. Before that...
you'll be lost.
W3 HTML Validator - Automatic
tool that parses a HTML document and warns of syntax errors. Almost
essential if developing standards-compliant HTML is important.
W3 CSS Validator -
Checks to see if a CSS definition is valid. Very useful.