Interesting (free) apps thread

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-07-07 06:10am

Post obscure interesting/useful apps/plugins/addons you've encountered here.

In no particular order (too lazy to sort):

http://www.virtualbox.org/ - Free virtualization, seems snappier than VMWare, at least on a C2D w/ virtualization support, cross platform

http://preload.sf.net - Preload- basically Superfetch for Linux, looks like it's been around since 2005, Using it since I now have 4GB of RAM and might as well fill it up w/ all the apps I might need...

http://musicbrainz.org/wd/PicardDownload - Mass mp3 tagger, does some kind of audio fingerprinting, size checking to guess song name. Crashes often for me though.Cross platform

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2254 - Unplug- Extracts FLVs and other media from websites

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112365 - An actually decent MPlayer build for Windows - never liked VideoLan much.

http://jvi.sourceforge.net/ - Vim keybindings for Netbeans! Now w/ visual block mode (my main reason for using vim in the first place).

http://www.oekakiart.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=391 - Paintchat - Multiuser collaborative drawing- I'm currently writing another implementation from scratch, since the UI is kind of crappy, and is missing features (eg, undo), and is closed source necessitating rewrite from scratch in order to stay legal. Java.

http://www.nomachine.com/ - Sorta like Citrix for Linux, performs better than regular remote X or VNC- open source version here http://freenx.berlios.de/, but can't find any precompiled packages for Ubuntu, and lazy.

Haven't used the stuff below for various reasons, but they look useful:

http://mumble.sourceforge.net/ - VOIP app for games, similar to teamspeak w/ focus on low latency and noise filtering- too lazy to be bothered to get it installed on server, since I'm too lazy to update my ubuntu from edgy, and should switch it to straight debian at some point anyway. Server doesn't like headless mode. Cross platform.

Cinelerra- powerful video editor, too lazy to read manual on how to use.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2007-07-07 07:13am

Roadkill - powerful, free unwrapping editor using the Blender pelt mapping algorithm. Superior to anything 3ds Max or Maya have to offer.

Ypoknons · Post by **Ypoknons** » 2007-07-07 08:48am

Keep an eye on Download Squad, they dig up a lot of cool stuff. I'm a bit too sick to dig through it right now, but for one there's an interesting copy/paste manager in there.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-07-07 10:43am

Foobar2k - Lightweight MP3 player. Very low memory footprint.

CCCP - Every possible video codec you could need. Minor configuration is required but beyond that there are very few formats it will not play.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » 2007-07-07 11:04am

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/495 Target Killer -- Prevents sites from opening links in new windows

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3199 Link Alert -- Changes the cursor to indicate the target of a link, like word documents, excel spreadsheets and pdf files.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/134 Copy Plain Text -- Copies text without formatting, with option to trim whitespace around text. Very well intergrated with contextual menu (right below "copy")

Oh yeah, and Thunar Bulk File Rename for XFCE (you know, the Linux window manager.)

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-07-07 07:24pm

General Zod wrote: CCCP - Every possible video codec you could need. Minor configuration is required but beyond that there are very few formats it will not play.

Eh, I prefer mplayer since it's pretty much self-contained, and Plus the ridiculous amount of flags for filtering video, frame by frame stepping, and screenshot support whcih WMP doesn't have.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2007-07-07 07:28pm

Pu-239 wrote:
General Zod wrote: CCCP - Every possible video codec you could need. Minor configuration is required but beyond that there are very few formats it will not play.

Eh, I prefer mplayer since it's pretty much self-contained, and Plus the ridiculous amount of flags for filtering video, frame by frame stepping, and screenshot support whcih WMP doesn't have.

Some self-contained players have a nasty habit of rendering things like subtitles poorly. CCCP contains MPC and Zoomplayer as well, which means you don't have to rely on WMP's craptacular interface and screenshot support. (MPC has built-in screenshot capabilities with relative ease).

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-07-07 08:02pm

General Zod wrote:
Pu-239 wrote:
General Zod wrote: CCCP - Every possible video codec you could need. Minor configuration is required but beyond that there are very few formats it will not play.

Eh, I prefer mplayer since it's pretty much self-contained, and Plus the ridiculous amount of flags for filtering video, frame by frame stepping, and screenshot support whcih WMP doesn't have.
Some self-contained players have a nasty habit of rendering things like subtitles poorly. CCCP contains MPC and Zoomplayer as well, which means you don't have to rely on WMP's craptacular interface and screenshot support. (MPC has built-in screenshot capabilities with relative ease).

Mplayer's subtitle rendering is actually pretty nice (as of 1.0rc1, which is about 6 months or so old?). Haven't used the other two you've mentioned in-depth though.