Adding some apps

So things are looking better on the desktop now and we still have a lean stable linux box. Our new problem is that we still can't really use it like a computer. Some might argue that all we need these days is a browser, but I think we should load up a few apps incase we need to do some work without a cloud connection. I've lined up some general PC uses below and the program I've selected to install on my box to do the job.

Accessories
There are a few things you just need in whatever OS you are running, we already have our file manager and text editor, but here are a few more apps to round us out:

• Calculator: Sure we can do math in our spreadsheet program, from the cli with bc, or in any programming language, but I think every OS should have a handy calc. I haven't found my perfect calculator yet, but galculator has worked great for me for a long time so I'll stick with that.
• Terminal: I know you are thinking we already have two; xterm and eterm. Yeah we do, but if we install aterm we get eye candy. Xterm will always be there if I need it, and I only load eterm to get my background image loaded with fbsetbg, but aterm is my main console all day everyday. We'll just install it for now and slick it up later.
• Screenshot: it's cool to create our perfect desktop environment, but how do we collect our bragging rights? You might want to take a screenshot, or you may really need to document something you see on your screen at any given time. For this I use imagemagick with some cool foo in my FB menu, but I'll save that for later.

Office Productivity
You can pick from a few office suites to load like Open Office or Koffice, but if you want to go with a "best of breed" approach, you can pick the individual applications you want to build your own office suite with. I do run full OO on my Ubuntu box so I can afford to go lightweight on my Debian install.

• Word Processor: So in MS world you've got Word, for basic/free built in you have Wordpad (which when working on a Windows server, I'm actually quite fond of.) In linux land we usually see people running Open Office Word Processor, and it's a fine choice with the ability to use LOTS of document format. Abiword has been around for a long, long time, oh and it's pure awesome so I'm going to install it.
• Spreadsheet: Again Open Office Spreadsheet gives us a full feature alternative to Excel, but I'm going to go light and I'm choosing Gnumeric for this.
• PDF viewer: So you can create PDF's in linux pretty easily, but to view them you need to load another app. I've only used Xpdf for any long amount of time so it's the only one I can recommend.

Internet Apps
I have some applications I use all of the time, they are particular to my job and the way I use my computers and servers so you may not need them. Since I'm installing them on my box, I'll document them here for completeness. We already have Opera so the most important internet app is already running on the system, now we just need to add whatever we'll be using on this box.

• Email: If you wanna go big and install a dedicated email program, here is where I'd put in sylpheed-claws, but I'm happy not to have it so I'm personally skipping. I can use webmail with any of my accounts, or just keep the imap connection going in Opera.
• FTP Client: I move lots of files for personal use and for work, they are often large archives of log files, etc. Since I work with people running Windows, Mac, and linux it's really handy to keep a dedicated FTP server out on the internet where I can create accounts and isolate directories for everyone I'm working with. Since I spend so much time using FTP I actually run a thick app for it, gftp. It's absolutely wonderful and I can't imagine life without it.
• IM Client: Since I work with people using AOL, MSN, Google, and Yahoo IM accounts, a multi-protocol IM client is a must. I've used Pidgin since it was released and I've never found anything lighter that works better. Recently I installed Meebo on one of my PC's and my wifes Droid, it seems to work pretty well but I'm gonna stick with what I know, it'll be easier for me to import contact lists if I don't change right now.
• Telnet/SSH client: Just PuTTY.
• Remote Desktop: I spend most days working on a variety of linux and Windows servers, and after web consoles and ilo every other connection method short of walking to the keyboard requires a special client to be installed rather than a browser. VNC is installed on some servers because Terminal Services is not supported, most of the rest are Windows and use RDP only. TSclient is a very full featured front end that keeps a connection history and gives you easy options for mapping your drive across or modifying display settings per connection. VERY nice app. I once had an issue getting protocols put into tsclient so now I install them first then install the gui frontend in a second step. I'm sure there is a better answer but I haven't bothered searching for it.

OK so how hard is it to install all of the applications we need in our OS? You can put them all in on one line, but I'm gonna split them up for blog formatting:
debian:/home/thom# aptitude install galculator aterm imagemagick
debian:/home/thom# aptitude install abiword gnumeric xpdf
debian:/home/thom# aptitude install gftp pidgin putty
debian:/home/thom# aptitude install vncviewer rdesktop
debian:/home/thom# aptitude install tsclient

OK, about 75Mb later we've got a pretty good set of apps we can run! Now all you have to do is search out all the menus and try to find what we've installed. If you can't find it you can launch any of them from the console.

Next time we'll dress up that Aterm config, strip down our fluxbox menu, setup imagemagick for some screenshots, and kick our eye candy up another notch.