Episode: 110
Title: HPR0110: Xoke's Favorite Apps
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0110/hpr0110.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:35:43

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So
Welcome to this episode of Hacker Public Radio. I'm Zoak and today we're going to talk
about my favourite Linux apps. So I'm finally doing a Linux, well kind of Linux based
one. So I ran, well it's a Ubuntu technically, it was a Ubuntu breezy when I started but
it's been upgraded and hanged around so much it probably really needs reinstalled at some
point. Before they had the new Xorg config stuff I ran the MV scripts and automatics and
all these sorts of things so it's a little hyped around. It's now hardy and I use
XFCE mainly so I guess that makes it a Ubuntu. It does to work though and that's quite
amazing if you compare it to a similar upgrade of Windows. How would a machine that started
off in Windows 3.1 and is now running VistaWork? Well actually it wouldn't because the hardware
wouldn't be vista capable but you get the idea. Breezy, Dapper, Edgey, Feisty, Gutsy, Hardy.
All upgrades quite often the beaters or RCs to avoid the rush.
Apart from a few minor odd things like the graphics drive and not appearing in the
restricted drivers bit for some reason it works perfectly. Actually that did just turn
up on the recent upgrades but it wasn't there for a while which is a bit odd. Even that
isn't a problem because I installed from the MVDU drivers and it works. I can get
compass working even although I don't because it would be silly running compass when you're
meant to be running a so called light to desktop and XFCE. So today I'm going to go through
some of the apps I use and I like and a few that I'm trying out and seem cool. Of course
you have different needs to me and like different things so you don't need to email
me to point out why you think I'm wrong. Do please email me if you have an application
you think I will like that. I love the feel of a new software package on your machine
it's. It's almost invigorating like you have a new toy to play with your productivity
as much higher. Okay, so I'm a complete tech head here.
Anyway, onto the applications. Mail. I used to use Evolution because it was the default
with GNOME and I realised I used about 1% of it. So currently I'm playing around with
Thunderbird and as I do have a 9Map server, thanks Jess. It's easy to try out different
ones. I even use multiplicationally which plays me back to when I used to use Elm and
Pine at University. I do also have scroll mouse setup for receiving only thanks again Jess
but Thunderbird is what I'm using mostly at the moment. I blame the lug radio guys for
going to me to play around with mail again. They were talking about trying out different
email clients a few weeks back. Web browser, while I use Flok as my main browser which
is no surprise if you've listened to my Flok Hpr episode. However, I do use Firefox in
various profiles such as Dev1 and I have to set up with various development extensions.
I do also have links in store for when I host my Xorg.com file and need to remember the
commands to fix it although there has been ages since I've done that with the bullet
prefix. I use Squid as a local proxy and have it doing various things and I may actually
do an episode about that to let you guys know what I do and then you can tell me what
I'm doing wrong and why I shouldn't be doing it. Anyway, the extensions I use. No script
which turns off the JavaScript and the like for safer browsing allows you to temporarily
or permanently allow it per website though which is really cool. Tab Mix Plus it's sort of
better than the Firefox tabs but it also does things like let me use a custom user Chrome
file to have the tabs on the left. As this laptop is widescreen it looks a lot better
that way. It doesn't probably work with Flok because they've moved things around but
it does work very well in Firefox. FireKeeper which is an intrusion and detection extension
apparently. It got some good reviews I put it on there it does pop up occasionally say
all something nasty is trying to do something. Let me know if you think it's good or not
and let me know why. All in one sidebar puts things on side like an Opera. Secure login
it stops Firefox if you think in any saved passwords. Yes I do have Flok saves and passwords.
Nothing really important just a couple of things that are just being lazy and it just saves
me having to remember and type more in. I'll talk more about passwords later. At Block
Plus to block ads of course I set up main profile and then link the patterns in it to the
other profiles from the other version to Firefox I run so everyone's running the same
black list and download status bar which instead of using a separate window shows downers
and status bar. Funnily enough hence download status bar. Those I'll run on every single
version. I also on Flok run Morning Coffee which sets up websites when you click on the
Coffee icon you can have it running either daily or weekly or certain days Monday Wednesday
Friday for example. So if you have something that comes out say every Wednesday there was
a podcast that you wanted to listen to that was you know two hours of ramping in sightful
talking about things then you could have it on Thursday to automatically load at that
page up and you could then download or listen to it or whatever if you wanted. I also use
GreeceMonkey which lets you run a ton of users scripts on various sites. I'm also playing
around with writing a few although I really suck at writing them because whilst I was
a developer and coded it was mainly Visual Basic because we were a big Microsoft place.
We did have a couple of C programs. We had some D-based stuff but basically it was Visual
Basic. Aha basically. I also use scrapbook which lets you save a page locally and then edit
and highlight it. That's pretty cool. My Dev extensions are used firework which allows
you to edit websites on the fly and dig through the CSS and stuff. That's pretty cool
like that's... it majorly crashes Firefox 3 the beta. I've noticed literally you turn
it on, you load a page of crashes, you reload a crashes, you reload a crashes, you turn
it off, the page loads fine. I use the web developer extension that allows you to change
the cookies, look at them, remove them, view the source, play the CSS and a bunch of stuff
that's really cool. I use FirePHP which is very similar to Firebook but for PHP. Funnily
enough. Use Regents Switcher. This lets you change to the use Regents funnily enough and
grease monkey again because as I said I've written a few very simple scripts. Now I'm a
horror organiser as anyone who listens to me and I see probably knows I've been talking
about an encryption HPR episode that I've started and this was going to be my second episode
of HPR and I've even recorded some of it and I left it because I don't know because I don't
like how it sounds. It's not ever going to see the light of day in the current state. I am trying
to write a vague script or release some notes and I keep changing it but as it stands it's not
ever going to see the light of day. So I've been trying to organise myself better and to that end
I've been using tracks to keep it to the list and to thelywiki to keep notes for various things
both of which I use with Prism to keep them standalone. Magnus, Flook and Firefox are still memory
hogs and this laptop only has half a gig of which Flook is currently as I write these notes
taking half of that so it slows things down so I actually closed it down so I could record this
properly. I use XChat with the Uberscript extensions for IRC although if you could get someone like
IRSSI or as Dave Yates likes to pronounce it RC, RC I know but you could use that to keep a screen
session and then connect XChat to the screen session at least in theory you should be able to.
No idea if you can but does that sound cool? Anyone have no idea how to do that? Let me know.
I use PC Man as my file manager. I do keep changing around and I try different ones out.
I've tried the new KDE1 whose name escapes me. Nautilus, Thunar, Thunar however you want to
pronounce it. I say Thunar it's a single N so Thunar, ELM, ML, FM, DUDAR, Thingy, the Dave Yates
favourite ML FM 2 I believe it's called. I've tried that one, I've tried the Norton Commander
like one's Midnight Commander and all those. I keep coming back to PC Man it is pretty much doing
everything I want. There's two things it doesn't do. You can't easily change the size of the
picture thumbnails. Yes you can go into the options and change it but in Nautilus you can simply do
I think it's a shift equals sign to get the plus or control plus to make the bigger and then
minus to make a smaller again which is really cool and you can't hit backspace to go up one page.
Now I'm left handed so I have the mouse from my left hand. My right hand normally hovers around
the page up page down backspace sort of keys and I use the combination of the two to flick around
between the directories and it's easier for me if I'm moving around so highlights and files where
I click cut for example it's easy to backspace up and then double click to go into another directory
then move over to the left and do it. I find that faster but I can't use backspace, minor annoyance
but there we go. I do Twitter. Now I'm still kind of figuring out but I can see benefit in it now.
I use Twil to use Twitter that's TW-H-I-R-L. I do keep changing around I've tried a lot of them
like Twitter, GTwitter and all these ones and I've had problems with all them. Twil ticks for
example kept herring about access to night. Twil doesn't remember my password they which
both me a little because things like that it's just my Twitter password it's not like my bank
details. I'm really not that fast and it would be nice to remember that so I'm just
watching myself log in. I do understand that that is a problem with air because Adobe Air
version is actually older if you look at them, zoke.org. I did a post about this how you can't
actually get a Linux version until you go to the dev area and they've got a really old one.
If anyone doesn't want to follow me on Twitter I am zoke so twitter.com slash zoke x-ray Oscar
Kilo Echo. I use key pass x for holding on my password for everything and the cool thing about
this is the database file it stores is really encrypted for a start but it's operating system
agnostic so you can actually then stick it on the thumb drive and load it from the Windows version.
Of course why would you want to Linux is way cooler but there you go. I use our door for
recording these podcasts. I did use our audacity but on gutsy they had a beta and it crashed way too
in fact the first episode it took me literally five days I think it was of fairly several hours
each day of trying to tidy up because you'd be all I said err that's tidy that up and I burped
here so let's remove that. Oh it's crashed again I've got me loaded all I didn't save that right
changed that delete that bit save do this do this one more bit save wait for it to save right do this
took forever really annoying I haven't had any of that issues with our door the only complaints
it won't save it as np3 so export it as a way file and then I actually have a bash script to
just grab the export door wow and give it to hpr xxx.mp3 which I can then plug whatever number it is
or leave it and let dupes nnigma do that the bash script basically runs a lane car with a dash
b I believe or hyphen b if you want for the bitrate. I use amurok for playing music can also
sing to my iPod but since I've put rockbox on the iPod I tend to just copy the files over
you some PC man. I get my podcast via bash podder with a cron job of course I listen to them
with audacious or that does try to suck listening to TLLTS live for some reason you get four or
five minutes in and then hangs up so I don't use audacious for streaming you can use stuff like
vlc that's much better but audacious is a nice simple player for listening to podcasts on laptop with
I use filezilla for ftp I have had problems with other ftp clients not remembering things and
having issues lots these things trying to make multiple connections to service and getting
me booted off because they only allow one I did literally try every single ftp client open up some
that tick search reftp install law filezilla is the one that works the rest for me does everything
I want has such a cool name as well I mean they always have their own theme song writing through
the net 30 servers high it's open source you don't need to buy fozilla yeah but if they did
they'd have to have file zoo key and that'd be the stupid lane one that no one liked and
yeah okay maybe they shouldn't do a song then no let's grab that idea
I use beobab for joy space analysis it's b-a-o-b-a-b bravo alpha oscar bravo alpha bravo for
joy space analysis it shows you how much space has been taken up by various things
than shows this pie chart with files it's really cool I use k time for torrents although I
haven't tried transmission yet I probably should do but I do love the rss feed and k time you
can just grab the feed from tv rss.net or I mean the legal you know rss feed for the latest
Ubuntu builds and have that as an rss have that feed in k time and have it download it for you
load it into k time bump hit refresh it lists them all for you and then to download them
I use pigeon fry m although I will have to try fun pigeon out sometime I use digicam for
organizing my photos I do love this although I'm trying to tag all my photos I took a bunch
on it I did some traveling a few years back went around america in australia and and brief stop
in tailand and stuff and I took literally thousands upon thousands of pictures so four continents
including europe and indiv course and thousands of photos that takes a bit of sorting I have
heard you're able to connect gallery turn Picasso web in the like I'm still playing around with
that a little having some issues but if I figure that out I made an episode on that and let
people know how to do it those gq view though for sorting through photos is in directory it's a really
nice quick simple program that allows you to scan through each file until you don't like others
just laid up one picture up which you can then go through and page through the others gq view is
cool because it shows you a little thumbnail to the others and you have and you have a little
farm as you show the directories you can click on those and go through them when I was using windows
I used to use earfan view and I've been looking for something similar on the lips and gq view is
pretty close doesn't age crop that's the only thing but that's cool I use gimp that's a given
pretty much although I'm trying out in skate because of the scalability zoom right in it's still
cool picture I hate the whole 30 boots and then you have to wait 20 minutes for the fusking
fs ck check to run so I installed autofusk which switches it to the shutdown and then it warns you
that you have hit 30 boots and asks whether you want to run the check now or not so if you are
in the middle of rebooting you can just say no and it waits and if you're done for the day and
you're checking down you can leave the computer and go to bed or whatever you can hit yes and then
you walk away and it runs everything and that's cool I use dosage to get the web comics every
morning another cron job and then I can quickly skin through them with gq view and I think that's
about it these are the programs I use the most I mean there are a ton more than I've played with
I'm sure these are the ones I use every day they were almost every day there are others I've used
in the past like scribers for example I used to scout newsletter but no one seemed to bother
reading them so I figured screw it and I stopped doing them and no one's actually mentioned hey
where are these that you used to do so I really don't think anyone read them scribers is really
cool and if you're doing desktop publishing I do recommend it I use g-edit for no real reason it
and k-edit pretty much the same I mean you type words and they appear on screen I mean that's
about it really there's only so much you can add into a text editor before it comes self-aware
like e-max and you know choice to kill us all like sky net uh yeah I'm a viperson
if I'm not using g-edit for the basic typing stuff up I want to also use a timer
applet with the xfc f-applets I think it is to run a gname applet on xfc two-time my kid reading
every night sees me I need to do 20 minutes oh and I have conky on my desktop but I really think
that's about it that is basically all my outside don't use tomboi as I said I use the
tiddly wiki instead I think that's about it I'm sure I'm going to remember something else
but there we go oh and I'd just like to say your vision sucks um it knocked
off I gotta wait an extra week for my who-fix so I hate your vision that's about it
I'd like to thank everyone for listening you can go and visit my website at soak.org
xray osca kilo echo dot osca Romeo gulf you can email me at soak.org gmail.com xray osca kilo
echo Sierra osca Romeo echo at gmail.com all that details on the hack public radio page
welcome the new people doing episodes and remind everyone else that if you want to do an episode
on pretty much everything because hey enigma will let me waffle on about doctor who for an
episode and a half if you want to do an episode on anything feel free to talk to enigma about it
email add minute hack public radio talk to him about doing an episode you're basically going to
get in thank you very much for listening I'll catch you next time
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