My Ten Favorite Linux Applications!

Here is a list of my ten favorite desktop Linux applications.

1. Basket Note Pads
Basket Note Pads is a multi-purpose note-taking application that allows you to keep all your notes in one centralized place (think Linux version of Microsoft OneNote). Basket Note Pads is a KDE application but its worth installing no matter what window manager you are using. Make sure to grab version 0.60 as it has a lot more features and bug fixes from previous versions.

2. Revelation Password Manager
Being a web developer / system administrator I have to deal with a lot of passwords every day. From MySQL connection strings, server credentials, CMS logins – the number of passwords are almost ENDLESS! Revelation Password Manager is a user friendly password manager for GNOME which allows you to store and retrieve all your passwords in one application (protected with a single master password). All passwords are stored in an AES Encrypted data file with cipher block chaining.

3. Exaile!
I wasn’t really happy with the default GNOME media players (namely Rhythmbox and Movie Player). After scouring the Internet I came across a little gem of a media player that suited all my needs. Exaile is basically GTk’s answer to AmaroK! It supports a multitude of plug-ins (album art fetching, lyrics fetching, last.fm support, mini-mode) It’s also being heavily developed and the main developer seems like a really nice guy! (Don’t take my word for it – join #exaile on FreeNode and give him a shout).

4. GnomeBaker
What can I say? GnomeBaker is one of the best no-nonsense CD / DVD burning applications around. It has a clean interface and it “just works” out of the box!

5. Eclipse PHP Integrated Development Environment
I was a long time PHP eclipse user and was pretty excited when Zend announced official support for the Eclipse Platform. The eclipse SVN plugin is great when working on projects with multiple developers. While still being heavily developed, it’s finally reached the point to be my primary IDE for PHP development.

6. AVG Antivirus
While Linux is pretty resistant to viruses I still like to scan my home folder every once in a while to make sure I haven’t picked up any nasties. AVG for linux workstation is a great Linux virus scanner for GTK+ 2.x. Note: While AVG isn’t open source, they do offer a free version for non-commercial use.

7. MySQL GUI Tools
MySQL has bundled all their GUI tools into one download. I’m really excited about MySQL workbench. MySQL workbench promises to be one of the best visual database modelers around. One note however: MySQL workbench is still in ALPHA! I had a co-worker blow out a database with just a few clicks and MySQL workbench.

8. Quanta Plus
Nvu and Bluefish can’t touch Quanta Plus. It pretty much beats every other Linux web development program out there.

9. VLC Media Player
VLC pretty much plays every format right out of the box. I use it in conjunction with this plug-in for Mozilla Firefox.

10. Xampp for Linux
XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. Xamp will install and setup (in a single subdirectory): Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, GD, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, gdbm, zlib, expat, Sablotron, libxml, Ming, Webalizer, pdf class, ncurses, mod_perl, FreeTDS, gettext, mcrypt, mhash, eAccelerator, SQLite and IMAP C-Client. It also has a nice GUI for managing Apache, MySQL, and ProFTPD.