Blogging Challenge: Blog About What You Know

So the first of the blog challenges is to write about what you know. This is a hard question for two reasons. First of all, you yourself have to figure out and realize what your expertise is. And second, how comfortable you are to admitting that fact in public. If you claim you know something but you don't really, you'll end up making a fool of yourself. If you do know a lot about a lot of things, you might be perceived as obnoxious by others if they think you're trying to be a smart-ass.

Anyways, so coming back to the point. I don't want to talk about something related to my research because I'm supposed to know that stuff anyways But if you know me or have been around my website, you would probably also know that I'm a big fan of open source software. So in this post I'll just mention some of the software I use for day to day tasks on the desktop. Lorelle says:

Think about all that you know and choose the one thing you would arrogantly assume you were the master of. Then write about it.

And so it shall be. People generally come to me looking for tips on how to get things done on Linux. What are the best tools for doing task X and so on. So if you read this post and if there's something you've been wanting to do on Linux but didn't know how, feel free to post a comment and I'll respond as best as I can. So here we go:

• Editing: This one is easy. I use Vim. 'nuf said.
• Audio player/manager: I use Amarok. Amarok is fast, full featured (podcast support, iPod integration, Wikipedia, Lyrics, themes, plugins), and tightly integrated with KDE. If you're a GNOME person, I would suggest looking at Banshee, Listen or Quod Libet.
• Image management: I use http://www.digikam.org. F-Spot is also pretty good.
• Instant Messaging: Kopete. Its not perfect, but it works well enough for me. They have voice support for Google Talk. I can view others' Yahoo webcam but I've never tried sending webcam images over Linux. File transfer is flaky. But it integrates very nicely with Amarok and KAddressbook, and I haven't found it any worse than Gaim.
• Browser: Firefox or Flock. For non-HTTP tasks, Konqueror is great. A “browser” for “non-web” tasks you ask? Well, Konqueror is a browser for all sorts of things: your file system, your email server (both POP/IMAP), your FTP server, your SSH account, your man pages, your info pages, your camera, your audio CD, any other external media devices you might have, your SAMBA shares, your compressed files, your settings – you get the picture (here is a related article, and another one).
• Email: KMail. GNOME folks might try Evolution. For an outlook-like replacement, check out Kontact.
• System monitoring: gkrellm and munin.
• Graphics: Inkscape. GIMP is good, but I don't like it that much.
• CD/DVD burning: K3B. Integrates very nicely with Amarok and Konqueror.
• Presentations: LaTeX Beamer.
• Video playback: Kaffeine
• Video editing: I haven't had to do a whole lot of this, so I'm not really well versed with this area. But video editing support in Linux is clearly very very primitive compared to the commercial alternatives. I've heard some good things about Avidemux and Kino DV.
• Educational (science related): Kalzium and KStars.
• Finance: KMyMoney

Thats all I can think of right now. If you know of any other interesting/cool applications, drop me a note. And do let me know if you found any information here useful.

Updates:

• Local search: Beagle with Kerry.
• Application launchers: Katapult and Yakuake (yakuake is actually a full fledged Konsole replacement.
• Network setup: Network Manager.
• BitTorrent: KTorrent. Almost like Azureus, but much less resource hungry.
• LaTeX editing: If you do a lot of LaTeX and Vim with Latex Suite doesn't cut it for you, you might want to check out Kile.
• Calculator: Qalculate. I've written about it before.