Chris @ Olstrom (.com)

For most Linux users who enjoy using a GUI, X-Chat has been the natural client of choice for them, simply because it kicks ass (it may also have something to do with it being included in many popular distributions). For those who are prefer the command-line (either because they are used to working via SSH, or they think that doing things in text-mode makes them cool), many will claim that irssi, ircii, bitchx, epic4, or any number of other clients is the best. Now, I’m an X-Chat fan, personally, but when it comes to text-mode, I think the command-line version of it is ugly as shit, and clunky. I’ll settle for bitchx, or epic4 (with the ThirdEye script).

Now, there’s a large group of IRC users out there, who use mIRC, and Windows. I’ll just ignore the Windows aspect of that, and pretend they’re all using WINE. Now, what makes X-Chat more desirable than mIRC? Let’s take a look, shall we?

With mIRC, you can write scripts in… mIRC-script. That’s about it. It’s limited, but some people have managed to do some pretty impressive things with it. Of course, if you look at the code for those amazing things, it’s usually harder to read than an awk-line.

Now, with X-Chat, you’ve got a bit of flexibility. Scripting is supported in… Perl, Python, Tcl, Ruby, and even DMDScript (aka JavaScript or ECMA-262). Hell, you you want to, you can use C or C++ to write plugins for X-Chat, including plugins to allow the use of any other language you’d like. That’s where the other plugins came from. Someone wanted support for it, so they added it. Which brings us to a lovely feature of X-Chat. It’s Open Source. It’s well-documented, and the code is all there for you to play with.

What else do we have…

Ah yes, coloured nicks, and marker lines. Convenient things that make it easy to keep track of who is talking, and remember where you stopped reading. Coloured nicks does exactly as the name implies. It assigns a colour to each person who talks, and whenever they talk in the future, their nick is highlighted in that colour (for those that dislike this, it is optional). The marker line just shows a little red line below the last line printed when the window lost focus. Easy to find your place!

Buttons. I don’t understand why this feature seems unique to X-Chat… all you have to do is type /addbutton , allowing you to have quick and easy access to the commands you use most often, and even allowing you to bind your scripts to buttons. Convenient!

I also love the away tracking, and the option to show hostnames next to nicks in the user list box (not recommend on FreeNode, though…).

Portability is also an issue for some. X-Chat runs on many platforms! Win32, Linux, BSD, and others! mIRC runs on… Win32. Oh, and other things if you fuck around with WINE or something. And even then, it runs really, really slowly.

For me, X-Chat is just the obvious choice. For casual IRC users, it’s perfect. For serious IRC junkies, script-writers and programmers, it’s perfect. You can use the languages you know, and if you don’t know them, you’re now equipped to learn them.

Why wait? Nothing to lose by trying it! Debian users, apt-get it, if you haven’t already. Gentoo users, there’s an ebuild for it. For those without a decent package manager (*cough* Slackware, RedHat, Slackware *cough*), grab the source and compile it. Win32 users… if you don’t feel like switching to a real OS, there’s a good build of it for Windows over at http://silenceisdefeat.org/~b0at/xchat/win32/ (I highly recommend SilvereX’s build).

This writing was originally featured here, on LiveJournal.

Another issue, another five pieces of software. Everything for your music-playback needs. Tools to get your music from disc to file (Grip), to sort your collection, and manage tags (Audio Tag Tool), to splice, crop, and edit (Audacity), and make mix discs (Serpentine). For those looking to expand their collections by sharing with others, that’s covered too (Nicotine).

Sound & Video -> Grip

“It has the ripping capabilities of cdparanoia builtin, but can also use external rippers (such as cdda2wav). It also provides an automated frontend for MP3 encoders, letting you take a disc and transform it easily straight into MP3s. The CDDB protocol is supported for retrieving track information from disc database servers. Grip works with DigitalDJ to provide a unified ‘computerized’ version of your music collection.”

While the interface to Grip can be a bit confusing the first few times you use it, the functionality cannot be denied. It handles everything you need to take those clunky compact discs, and bring the tracks from them into a much more manageable, compact format on your computer.

For those of you still using the MP3 format, Grip supports encoding to this format, and can even pull tags from online databases like CDDB. Vorbis and FLAC users enjoy the same features, and can rest easy knowing that their music is stored in a non-proprietary format that actually sounds good.

Once you’ve configured Grip (which the included help button does a great job of explaining how to do), ripping albums is as simple as putting in the disc, and clicking one “Rip + Encode”.

Score: 9/10

The interface, while simple once you figure it out… is less than intuitive at first glance. This needs to be fixed to get a 10. It would also be nice if it detected which encoders were available, and did not display the option for using encoders you don’t have installed.

Internet -> Nicotine

“Nicotine is a client for SoulSeek, a light and efficient file sharing system, written in Python and using the GTK2 toolkit, based on the PySoulSeek project. It features uploading, downloading, searching and chatting, with strict bandwidth control, and tries to look like PySoulSeek.”

Peer-to-peer networks are everywhere these days, but they are rarely very social. Nicotine is a SoulSeek client, a network that differs from many because of it’s social interaction. It functions very much like IRC (especially allowing users to form rooms, usually centered around a genre of music, making it easier to find people with similar taste to yourself), but with the added ability of browsing other users’ music collections. Next to each user’s name is the number of files they are sharing, the rate at which they can upload, and an icon indicating whether they allow anyone to download, or only friends. Due to it’s highly social nature, SoulSeek tends to frown upon leeches (those who download without sharing in return). This encourages the majority of users to share, which makes it easier for everyone to find what they want.

Score: 8/10

The interface can cause some serious resource consumption if maximized at high resolutions (1920×1440 is what I use, but it chokes at 1600×1200 too). I’m not sure what it can do to make this easier, but I find it annoying.

Sound & Video -> Audio Tag Tool

“Audio Tag Tool is a program to manage the information fields in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files (commonly called tags). Tag Tool can be used to edit tags one by one, but the most useful features are mass tag and mass rename. These are designed to tag or rename hundreds of files at once, in any desired format.”

I can’t think of enough good things to say about this application. I love it. It has saved me hundreds of hours, if not far more than that. It is the core component I rely on to keep my music collection organized. The tag-editor is simple, the batch-rename feature is a godsend, and the option to guess tags based on filenames is handy. I don’t see terribly much use to the Clear Tags option, but eh…

The playlist creation is handy, for people who actually use playlist files. This thing also doesn’t choke on massive libraries (I’ve seen it take 5-10k of songs, and scan them without complaint).

Score: 9.5/10

Add CDDB/FreeDB support, and maybe a cover art search option… and I don’t think anything else would be needed. This is an awesome application. A must-have for anyone with more than 50 tracks in their library.

Sound & Video -> Audacity

“Audacity is a multi-track audio editor for Linux/Unix, MacOS and Windows. It is designed for easy recording, playing and editing of digital audio. Audacity features digital effects and spectrum analysis tools. Editing is very fast and provides unlimited undo/redo. Supported file formats include Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV, AIFF, and AU.”

I find Audacity to be a great tool, really. It’s not the easiest thing to pick up, but given that it’s audio editing, which is hardly a simple task, that’s acceptable. My skills in this area aren’t all that developed, but it does what I need to do quiet nicely. Splicing, mixing, fading… merging stuff, manipulating channels and all sorts of spiffy things. It’s also great for cleaning up defective segments of damaged audio tracks.

Score: 9/10

It’s fast, efficient, and effective. I don’t know enough about audio editing to know if it does everything anyone could want, but I have yet to find something I want it to do, that it doesn’t do. 9 seems like a fair score, given that. In my eyes, perfect. But how useful for other people with more complex demands than mine?

Sound & Video -> Serpentine

Ah, Serpentine. So simple, and so elegant. Burning audio discs could not be easier. The interface is sleek, intuitive, and does exactly what it needs to do: make audio compilations, and write them to disc. I have absolutely no complaints about this program.

Score: 10/10

A classy example of what software should be. Built for a specific task, and excellent at that one task.

This writing was originally featured here, on LiveJournal.

Let’s waste some time, and explain why exactly I’m doing this. If you don’t care, just skip it and read the reviews.

I have some free time, and I like playing around with software. It’s fun to try different programs, and find what I consider to be the best tool suited to the task. I don’t review Windows software, even though some of the things I do review may run on Windows. This isn’t meant to be an “Omigawd, convert to free software” rant, because if you know me, you know that I don’t really care what you use. The opinions presented herein are mine, and if I can expose a few people to some software that they end up enjoying, that’s great. Comments are welcome, and encouraged.

Yes, I use Linux exclusively. Yes, I think that the majority of people are fully capable of doing so, if they can overcome their fear of change, and the perception that Linux is even remotely difficult to use. My 9-year old brother uses Debian GNU/Linux, and has no problems with it. Both of my younger sisters use variants of GNU/Linux, and they aren’t especially tech-savvy (then again, they aren’t idiots, either).

If you think I’m delusional, and that Linux is not ready for the desktop, you are entitled to think that. Go ahead and call me a dreamer. There’s a funny thing about dreams: If you keep accepting it as nothing more than a dream, that’s all it will ever be. It is only when we start accepting it as a reality that we can begin to make it one. In decades past, the concept of a computer in every home was dismissed as nothing more than a dream. An industry of so-called ‘dreamers’ believed it could be a reality, and look where we are today. My dream, and that of a community of like-minded ‘dreamers’ is that users will no longer be bound by the chains of restrictive licensing. It won’t be considered ‘immoral’ to share software with your friends, and young programmers will have access to the code for all of their favourite software, to learn from, and to build on. The quality of software will be determined not by the corporate investment in it, but by the communities built around it, and the people interested in bringing quality to that software. And finally, we may step away from the greed-driven mindset our culture has adopted, and society will have a chance to evolve from the “how can I use what I know to benefit me?”, to a more altruistic “how can I put my skills to use in such a way that they will benefit the most people?”. Is it a dream? Maybe, but if we don’t try to make it a reality, it never will be one.

This issue reviews some free software in mainstream usage (Firefox, Gaim, OpenOffice.org), and a few known-but-less-common ones (X-Chat, Drivel). Enjoy!

Internet -> Mozilla Firefox

“Firefox is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Camino, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be lightweight and cross-platform.”

I first switched for Firefox back around 0.6-0.7, if I recall, because it was an open-source alternative, and Mozilla itself was (and still is) just too bloated. Honestly, if I wanted a web browser that checked my email, my RSS feeds, and had an integrated IRC client… I’d use emacs. Now, with all the other browsers out there (Mozilla, Opera, Galeon, Epiphany, Konquerer, Links, etc) what does Firefox offer that makes it so special?

Popup Blocker

Popups: we’ve all dealt with them. Surfing a site, and BAM. A window appears, and covers what you were doing. At best, it’s some web monkey’s idea of a ‘helpful navigation tool’, or more likely, it’s an ad. Maybe some dancing animated GIF that makes you want to claw your eyes out, or a horrible flash animation, complete with theme song. Maybe it’s just a quiet banner telling you to enlarge your penis. Whatever it is, it’s annoying, and it interferes with your ability to browse in comfort. Firefox puts you back in control, and blocks popups, alerting you whenever it does, and allowing you to see only the popups you decide you want to see.

Tabbed Browsing

I think the Firefox site explains this one best, really…

“Tabbed Browsing is a powerful feature that makes surfing the web faster and more convenient. Managing multiple web pages within a single window helps to keep your desktop and taskbar free from clutter; and allows you to keep reading while other pages load in the background.”

Live Bookmarks

We all know bookmarks. A convenient way to remember those sites we like, and get back to them often. Sites that support RSS feeds and other forms of syndication can be accessed with Live Bookmarks, which pulls the latest headlines directly from the site, and into your bookmarks. As the site is updated, so are your bookmarks!

Smart Search

A lot of people add search bars to their browsers, often one for each engine they use. Google, Yahoo, and others…. it can clutter your browser pretty fast. Firefox comes out-of-the-box with several popular search engines accessible from one conveniently located search box, and Google set as the default. Your favourite search not on the list? A few clicks can usually solve that, just select whatever engine you desire from a list of hundreds of additional search plugins.

Themes

Browser doesn’t match your wallpaper? Your mood? Your icons? Firefox themes are easy to install, just find one you want (usually on the Themes site), and click ‘Install Now’.

Extensions

This feature alone is enough reason to be hooked on Firefox, for many users. Is the browser missing a feature? Extensions are as easy to install as themes, and can add any feature you want. Want to disable JavaScript everywhere you go? Grab the NoScript extension. Tired of non-popup ads? The Adblock extension can help! Want to have more control of your search experience with Google? CustomizeGoogle is the extension for you. For those of you that missed Mozilla’s IRC client, there is a ChatZilla extension for Firefox. Chat on IRC and surf the web, all from one application!

Score: 9.5/10

If the interface had greater compliancy with Gnome’s HIG, and if features like Adblock were included out-of-the-box, I’d give it a perfect 10.

Internet -> Gaim

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client. It supports Jabber, AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Gadu-Gadu, Groupwise, SILC, and other protocols, all from one application.

It’s quite convenient to be able to log into multiple accounts (with different protocols!) simultaneously. No more having amsn, ICU, and other clients filling up my notification area, and memory.

“Gaim supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.”

Adding the Gaim-Encryption, and Off-the-Record Messaging plugins can protect your conversations from interception on the wire, and the optional HTML-logging feature makes it convenient to find information lost in old conversations (an address, shipping number, birthday, etc).

Score: 7/10 (8/10 with Gaim-Encryption and/or Off-the-Record Messaging)

Webcam and voice chat support are essentially non-existent. However, it has been said that these things will be available in the 2.0 release. Additionally, the IRC client really doesn’t satisfy me. It lacks decent scripting capabilities, and it just feels clunky compared to some.

Internet -> X-Chat IRC

“XChat is a graphical IRC Client with a GTK+ GUI. It has a look and feel similar to AmIRC for the Amiga. Special features include the mIRC extension DCC RESUME and mIRC color, multiple server/channel windows, dialog windows, and a plugin API.”

What can I say? X-Chat is without a doubt, the most reliable, enjoyable IRC client I’ve ever used. It just works (TM). On top of that, the scripting and plugin support is awesome. It doesn’t use some language unique to itself (*cough* mIRC-script *cough). Rather, it supports the use of widely-used languages for extending it’s functionality. With Perl, Python, Tcl, and Ruby for scripting, and C / C++ for plugins, the potential for adding features is limitless.

Score: 9.5/10

The only thing preventing a perfect 10, is the inability to position windows-within-windows, mIRC-style. Also, if I recall, the interface is not Gnome HIG compliant, but there is an addon to solve that, so I can’t really dock points for that.

Office -> OpenOffice.org 2.0

“OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source.”

“With new features, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society. “

Score: 9/10

While improved, the memory footprint is still a bit heavy. If that gets fixed, and support for GPG-signing documents, and optionally encrypting them were added…. I’d give it a 10.

Internet -> Drivel Journal Editor

“Drivel is a LiveJournal.com (and other web based journal systems) client for the GNOME desktop. It supports all livejournal-based servers, and allows you to perform most functions that are supported by the server (posting, friends editing, friend page checking, post editing etc). It is designed to utilize the new features of GNOME 2.0 including GConf and GTK 2.0.”

Probably the least mainstream of the software reviewed this issue, Drivel is what I use to make these posts, so it seemed fitting to discuss in this first issue. It’s easy, convenient, and it’s what I use to make all blog posts. I don’t really know what to say, other than it’s like blogging from your desktop, without the hassle that most blog-style sites have. A convenient drop-down box to select mood, another that attempts to detect the music you’re listening to. A shame that it only seems to detect XMMS, which I don’t use. Hmm… gonna have to drop the score for that.

Score: 9.5/10

Drivel needs to support detecting songs playing in players other than XMMS, for it to get a perfect 10. I’d also like to see things like supporting GnuPG signatures, and maybe even public-key encryption. Friends lists are great, if everyone you want to read it uses the service too. If they don’t, you force them to register, just to view your post, or you make the post public. GnuPG support could provide a solution.

This writing was originally featured here, on LiveJournal.

Thus far, my conclusion stands. Ubuntu is Debian with a lot of the sharp edges rounded off. And it just gets better with each release, really. The addition of the “Add Applications” menu is quite enjoyable. While I’m personally a fan of the more traditional “apt-get install “, simply because I can write scripts around it. This new interface is far more convenient than Synaptic is. Now, I love Synaptic. But for new users, it’s intimidating. Sure, it’s easy once you use it a few times. But nobody wants to be presented with 15,000+ package, many of which do the same thing. New users want to know what to install, and have someone tell them that. This new package management interface does just that. It’s so convenient!

On top of all this, Ubuntu 5.10 finally comes with something I’ve been adding to most customer’s PCs anyways. A graphical bootsplash. No matter how much you tell someone that Linux doesn’t require console work, if they see it boot up, they get scared the first time. If you want to convert them, they have to be comfortable. The system can be as awesome as you want, if they fear it before they use it, you’ve lost already. A graphical bootsplash really helps.

The option to do OEM installations is something I know a lot of us have wanted. Everything gets configured at installation, except things like Usernames and Networking. The first time a user boots it up, it asks them to select a username, and configure their network. No more installing on-site at a client’s house!

Gnome 2.12 doesn’t really feel all that different from 2.10, honestly. Nothing about it really impressed me more than 2.10 already had. Still getting used to the menu repositioning from 2.8…

GCC 4.0.1 is a welcome addition, since I keep installing it ANYWAYS. glibc 2.3.5 is also appreciated.

Overall, I think this release marks another solid step forward for Ubuntu, and with a bit of luck (and teamwork), for the whole Debian-based community.

Conclusion: Ubuntu 5.10 is ready for the desktop. No issues installing it out-of-the-box, and the OEM install option only sweetens the deal, along with the graphical bootsplash. New users, this is a great place to start. Veterans of other distros, give it a spin. Maybe you’ll see something you like. Overall, solid release.

Rating: 8.5/10

If the additions from the Ubuntu-Hardened project were rolled into this, and Reiser4 support added to the installer… I’d be tempted to give this a higher score.

This writing was originally featured here at the Open Source Institute, and I have been told that it was featured on Red Library, Ready Response and CyberArmy. These reports have not been confirmed, and no permalinks are available at this time.