Essential applications (Linux, Android, Windows)

A list of all the applications that I use, on various platforms.

Linux Applications

Packaging Systems (on Gentoo)

• emerge

  THE best package manager for Linux.

• flatpak

  Works well on Gentoo (OpenRC) and allows to install some programs that don't have ebuilds available.

• appimage

  another good package system, entirely self contained (no need to install a package manager to run appimage packages).

• snap

  requires systemd, so bad choice for Gentoo OpenRC systems. Better to avoid snap packages.

Console Applications

• htop

  Small utility to monitor your system's resource usage (CPU and RAM).

• nano

  Good console text editor.

• screen

  Utility to allow to launch long commands on remote hosts, disconnect and later reconnect to your previous session.

• wgetpaste

  Excellent small utility to post to an online paste service.

Desktop & File Sharing

• Dolphin

  Best file manager available on any platform due to its excellent integration with any protocol (SFTP, FTP, etc).

• Nextcloud

  Very good free file sharing platform (similar to Google Drive or Dropbox). You must setup your own server.

• Insync

  Good Google Drive synchronization client for Linux. Not free, but I was unable to find a correct free client.

Internet

• Brave

  Better and more lightweight than Chromium.

• Firefox

  The standard open-source browser that you can trust. Emerge netscape-flash or gnash to get Flash support.

• Chromium

  Was best browser available for Linux, now bloated and second to Firefox.

• Opera

  Another good web browser. Development tools are awful, and not free.

• Floccus

  Easy bookmarks synchronization service. Required with Firefox & Chromium.

• Thunderbird

  Good open-source email client from Mozilla.

• Filezilla

  Best fully featured FTP client currently available on Linux.

• Konversation

  IRC client for KDE, better integration with KDE than X-Chat.

• Kopete

  Excellent, ultra-customizable multi-protocol IM client.

• Krdc

  VNC / Rdesktop client for KDE.

• TightVNC

  VNC client.

• Ekiga

  SIP (Audio / Video) client. For webcams or remote conferences. Very buggy still.

• aMule

  Best client for eMule P2P networks.

• kTorrent

  Nice client for torrent downloads.

• Eiskalt DC ++

  Client for Direct Connect networks.

Development

• GCC

  The whole GNU tool chain will be of course included in the system.

• VSCode

  Excellent, fast IDE.

• Eclipse

  Excellent, complex IDE for Java and other languages as well with plugins.

• Kate

  Lightweight text editor.

• Quanta

  Good text editor oriented towards web development (PHP, Javascript, HTML).

• KDevelop

  Very good IDE for C/C++ development.

• Subversion with KDEsvn

  Excellent source management system. KDEsvn is the best GUI front-end available currently under KDE. It has Konqueror integration.

• Kompare

  Good program to visualize diffs.

• Kdiff3

  GUI for the diff3 utility. Needed to create patches.

• Okteta

  This is an hex editor, sometimes useful.

Office

• Okular

  Free PDF viewer. Lighter than Acrobat Reader. Can reload files instantly, so very useful for LaTeX development. In theory can also open .epub and .mobi files.

• Xournal++

  Tool to easily add text to a PDF document (very useful for some documents that don't have PDF forms).

• Foliate

  Great e-book reader.

• CoolReader

  Another e-book reader.

• FBReader

  Epub / mobi / azw reader. Has some issues with some .epub files. Exists on Android too.

• Calibre

  Excellent software to manage collections. The viewer features are not interesting.

• Tellico

  Organizes a collection. Can be used with file collections, although it is not ideal.

• LibreOffice

  Necessary to open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

• Odoo

  Web based accounting application (very powerful, can be used as a fully featured ERP). Open-source, can be self-hosted, but a paying SaaS version also exists.

• KAddressBook

  Good address book / contact manager.

• PortableSigner

  Tool in Java to electronically sign a PDF document. Comes with a Swing interface.

Graphics

• Gwenview

  Excellent KDE image viewer.

• Inkscape

  Excellent SVG editor. Same as Adobe Illustrator.

• The GIMP

  Excellent graphics manipulation program. Can be automated via scripts.

• Digikam

  Very good image library management program. Very useful as well to find image duplicates (by content / similarity).

• Geeqie

  Also able to search for image duplicates (but worse than Digikam).

• Skanlite

  Application to scan documents from a scanner. Minimalistic but decent.

Multimedia

• SMPlayer

  Best video player interface. Can use mplayer or mpv (recommended) as backend.

• Kodi

  Excellent Home Theater software.

• Strawberry

  iTunes like audio player and collection manager.

• Clementine

  Another iTunes clone.

• MComix

  Really excellent viewer for reading comics.

• Gwenview

  Best image viewer (for collections).

• VLC

  It will play less files than MPlayer, but is still good. Allows streaming over a network.

• Showimg

  Excellent image viewer.

• MPlayer

  This is the player that will play almost all your media files. On Linux you should use a different GUI.

• OBS Studio

  Great software to record (and stream) movies to disk.

• Kdenlive

  A video editor with advanced features.

• Avidemux

  A tool that allows you to split videos with a GUI (among other things).

• K3b

  Nice GUI to burn CDs/DVDs. Also able to rip audio CDs to Ogg / Flac / MP3.

• Amarok

  iTunes like audio player and collection manager. Not actively developed anymore.

Utilities

• Ark

  With the Konqueror plugin, it has a nice integration into your system. Allows you to uncompress archives directly from Konqueror / your desktop.

• Authy

  2 Factor Authentication (2FA) application. Better than Google Authenticator, as it works on Android and Linux, but unfortunately is very buggy (automated backups don't sync well across devices, Linux app does not start with some versions...). Note also that the name of the accounts are not synced across devices, only the keys themselves. If it worked well, it would be the best 2FA available.

• 2FAS

  Another 2FA application that has to be tested. Available in Android and as a Chrome browser extension.

• Virtual Volumes View

  File indexer / volume cataloger. Very basic, but no better alternatives right now.

• Basenji

  Another file indexer.

• smartmontools

  Tool to monitor the SMART status of your hard drive.

• phoronix-test-suite

  benchmarking tool. It is actually a test suite manager, you can install and run many different test suites.

• bonnie / bonnie++

  I/O (hard drive) benchmarking tool.

Emulation & Virtualization

• Wine

  This is absolutely necessary to play Blizzard games (Warcraft III), and many other Windows games as well. Latest versions are really impressive.

• VirtualBox

  A free and excellent virtualization software. Allows you to run Windows natively on your Linux guest OS.

• RetroArch

  Great front-end to many virtualization systems (especially arcade and console emulators).

• DosBox

  Emulator for the DOS operating system, allows you to play old PC games.

• Qcmame

  Front-end for the SDLMame Linux version.

• GXMame

  Front-end for the XMame Linux version (obsolete, does not work anymore with SDLMame).

• Gens

  Sega Genesis emulator.

• Yabause

  Sega Saturn emulator.

Games

• Battle for Wesnoth

  A great wargame with nice art.

• Majesty

  Native port of the great fantasy kingdom simulation game.

• Pingus

  Free clone of Lemmings, excellent.

• Return to Castle Wolfenstein

  Native port of the FPS game.

Android Applications

Multimedia

• Kodi

  Best video player on Android. Can be configured to auto-hide OSD (Settings -> Interface -> Configure Screen -> On screen display).

• Kore

  Remote control application for Kodi.

• Perfect Viewer

  Great application for reading comics.

• VLC

  Good video player on Android.

Utilities

• File Manager +: Good file manager.

Windows Applications

Development

• MinGW

  This allows you to use the GCC compiler on Windows, allowing your applications to be portable.

• Eclipse

  Excellent, complex IDE for Java and other languages as well with plugins.

• Notepad++

  Very good lightweight text editor.

• TortoiseSVN

  Excellent GUI front-end for Subversion.

Utilities

• Avira

  Free antivirus tool.

Mac OS X Applications

Packaging Systems

• SoftwareUpdate

  Built-in (from Apple), will only update the OS and Apple applications. Very easy.

• Fink

  Large repository of UNIX open-source software.

• DarwinPorts

  Other package manager. The repository has a lot of server software. Easy to use.

Internet

• Mail

  Free as in beer (from Apple), good client except for the Spotlight search feature taking hours (and not returning anything useful, generally).

• Thunderbird

  Good open-source email client from Mozilla.

• Firefox

  The standard open-source browser that you can trust.

• Safari

  Probably the best browser available for OS X (very fast). Based on Konqueror so should be open.

• Cyberduck

  FTP client, open-source. I don't like it that much but it seems one of the best for the Mac.

• X-Chat Aqua

  Open-source IRC client. Not awesome, but ok.

• Fire

  Open-source multi-protocol IM client.

Development

• GCC

  Included in the system from Apple.

• X-Code

  Good IDE for C++/Objective-C/Java, unfortunately only available on the Mac. It manages its own build system, but this is not portable.

Multimedia

• iTunes

  Excellent audio player.

• MPlayer

  Best video player available on the Mac, but should be compiled from source. The binaries versions are not maintained it seems. Also, the GUI sucks. Update: new binaries seem available directly from the official site.

• VLC

  It will play less files than MPlayer, but the Mac port is official and better.

• Adobe Photoshop

  Best image editing program.

• Roxio Toast

  Good CD/DVD-burning software, but not free.

Office

• Adobe Acrobat Reader

  Essential to read PDF files.

• Address Book

  Nice contact book manager.

Utilities

• Built-in Unarchiver

  It will decompress .tar, .zip, and other formats. Nice integration into the Finder.

• CDFinder

  Organizes a CD/DVD collection. Good but not multiplatform nor Open-Source.

• CDCat

  Organizes a CD/DVD collection. Free as in speech, multiplatform, uses Qt3. But you must compile it yourself.

• smartmontools

  Tool to monitor the SMART status of your hard drive. If you install using the Apple installer, the daemon will be automatically launched at startup (remove the StartupItem to prevent that).