Favourite Apps; Revisited.(Again!) 29-09-2020

[Moltke]

Hi everyone! Hope you're all having a nice life!
My fellow "Linuxers", what are your favourite apps? I'm asking for those ones you have a preference for, I myself have developed a certain preference for quite a few ones which I always install in any distro I try either as a VM or the real thing, as well as have learnt about a few ones to avoid. So, these are the apps I like the most so far based on ease of use, features and performance:

Multimedia

QMplay2
It can play all formats supported by FFmpeg, libmodplug (including J2B and SFX). It also supports Audio CD, raw files, Rayman 2 music and chiptunes. It contains YouTube and Prostopleer browser and a bunch of other modules. The application is created by Błażej Szczygieł. You'll have to download a .deb file in order to install qmplay2, which you can find here http://zaps166.sourceforge.net/?app=QMPlay2 link no longer works, at least not the way it used to, instead, go here https://github.com/zaps166/QMPlay2  By the way, there's now an appimage so you don't need to install it, unless you want to.

Clementine
A free and open-source audio player. It is a port of Amarok 1.4 to the Qt4 framework and the GStreamer multimedia framework. It is available for Unix-like, Windows and macOS. Clementine is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Available in Lite Software.

Subdownloader
A program for finding and downloading/uploading subtitles for your movies/series (MKV,MP4,AVI,etc).
In LL simply do

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sudo apt-get install subdownloader[/s] You can read more abot the app here http://subdownloader.net
No longer works, or at least it didn't last few times I tried, such a shame cause it was really a nice app for bulk subtitles download. I use subliminal now instead and/or download subs from opensubtitles.org.

VLC
VLC has proven me wrong since I didn't like it and thought it was kind of short on features but after playing a little bit more with it I just realized is just the opposite; has tones of features. VLC comes preinstalled in most distros and LL is no exception. Been playing with VLC 4, which is still beta in a VM and looks promising.

Word/Text processors, editors

Synonymful
An app that helps in finding suitable synonyms for improving your writing. It's an appimage, so you don't have to install anything. You can find here http://synonymful.com

Zim
A graphical text editor used to maintain a collection of wiki pages. Each page can contain links to other pages, simple formatting and images. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a nonexistent page. All data is stored in plain text files with wiki formatting. Various plugins provide additional functionality, like a task list manager, an equation editor, a tray icon, and support for version control. And now it's installed by default in LL!

Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a proprietary cross-platform source code editor with a Python application programming interface (API). It natively supports many programming languages and markup languages, and functions can be added by users with plugins, typically community-built and maintained under free-software licenses. For a text editor I really like this one; nice interface and some handy features. It reminds me a bit to Kate but without all of those KDE dependencies.
To find instructions on how to install sublime visit its website https://www.sublimetext.com/

Graphics Editors/Viewers

Krita
A free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and animation purposes. It features a low-distract UI, high-quality OpenGL accelerated canvas, color management support, advanced brush engine, non-destructive layers and masks, group-based layer management, vector artwork support and switchable customization profiles. It runs on Linux, Microsoft Windows, and macOS. I also like gimp, and to be honest since I discovered Krita I always install it but I'm so used to Gimp that I don't use it that much, that being said, I'm a complete noob when it comes to using it.  You can install Krita throught your terminal just typing

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sudo apt-get install krita
or go to its website and download the appimage https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/

Mirage Image Viewer
Is a fast and simple GTK+ image viewer. Because it depends only on PyGTK, Mirage is ideal for users who wish to keep their computers lean while still having a clean image viewer.  You can install it via apt-get. Here's the link to it's website so you can know more about it http://mirageiv.sourceforge.net/ It's not availbale in the Ubuntu 20.04 repos, though it is on 20.10's. You can get the one for 18.04 from here https://pkgs.org/download/mirage


Internet

Chromium
Is an open-source Web browser project started by Google, to provide the source code for the proprietary Google Chrome browser. The two browsers share the majority of code and features, though there are some minor differences in features and logos, and they have different licensing. Unlike its brother Chrome, Chromium performs better; loading pages faster while using less system resources. You can install it using Lite Software tool. Not anymore thanks to all that snap nonsense, however, you can follow instructions from here http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2020/06/install-chromium-via-deb-ubuntu-20-04/

Corebird
A modern, easy and fun Twitter client. Simple and it serves its purpose quite well. In LL simply do

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sudo apt-get install corebird You can check more about it here https://corebird.baedert.org
[/s]
There's no more corebird and haven't found a realiable alternative other than the webapp which installs via chromium by clickin the "+" symbol that appears on the search bar on sites that offer WPAs.

Claws Mail
A very lightweight email client (and news reader), based on GTK+, featuring:
Quick response, graceful, and sophisticated interface, easy configuration, intuitive operation, abundant features, extensibility, robustness and stability. The appearance and interface are designed to be familiar to new users coming from other popular email clients, as well as experienced users. Almost all commands are accessible with the keyboard. Still my favourite; easy to use and featureful, at least for my needs It's been available in the repos for some time now.

Tixati
I used it in Windows and now it's available in Linux too, so I'm using it in LL. There's no official repositories but you can install it via .deb file which you can download from its website https://www.tixati.com/download/

Frostwire
A free and easy Downloader, BitTorrent Client and Media Player for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Search, Download, Play and Share Files. Like tixati, you'll have to install it by downloading a .deb file from its website http://www.frostwire.com

I no longer nor tixati neither frostwire but aria2 and it works great. It's available in the repos https://aria2.github.io/

System

Guake
A drop-down terminal for GNOME Desktop Environment. Like similar terminals, it is invoked with a single key - F12 -, and hidden by pressing the same key again. It's in the repositories so all you have to do is

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sudo apt-get install guake[/s] I no longer use this;
1. Since I learnt how to make xfce4-terminal behave in a queake-like fashion, drop-down and
2. Since xfce4-terminal's such a great app, there's no need for installing more terminals.

Apt-Fast
A small shell script wrapper that can drastically improve apt-get & aptitude download speed using multi threaded tool such as axel and aria2 which is simultaneously downloading packages with multiple connections per package. If you want to use apt-fast you'll have to add its PPA to your system:

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:saiarcot895/myppa

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sudo apt-get update

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sudo apt-get install apt-fastHere's a very nice and instructive arcticle that you might find helpul if decide on using apt-fast. https://www.tecmint.com/use-apt-fast-command-speed-up-apt-get-downloads-installs-ubuntu/
[/s] I no longer use this, apt's become pretty fast and the need for this wrapper is no more, so ...

Recoll
Is a desktop search tool that provides efficient full text search (from single-word to arbitrarily complex boolean searches) in a friendly GUI, with minimum technical sophistication and few mandatory external dependencies. It runs under many Unix-like operating systems, and is mostly independent of the desktop environment. I like catfish, but Recoll is quite better since it offers the possibility to have a preview of the file, so in case you enter a word that you know is that text you can preview among the results so you can find the one you're looking for. Recoll is in the repositories so you can install it via

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$ apt-get install recoll In my KDE system I don't use it since plasma's indexing feature is quite good but I do use it in xfce.

New apps:

Ksnip
Ksnip is a Qt-based cross-platform screenshot tool that provides many annotation features for your screenshots. Despite being a QT based app, it has very few dependencies and it's a fine app, quite useful to tell the truth. It's not available from the repos, so you'll need to download the .deb pkg from here https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip

Megasync
Megasync's the desktop client for the popular cloud service offered by Mega.nz. To install it you have to download the .deb pkg from Mega's website https://mega.nz/

Some of the apps' descriptions I copied/pasted them from either their websites and/or some articles on blogs all over the web as well as from the wikipedia.
Well, I didn't mean to make it this long but while I was wrting I thought "this and that" so...I'm hoping to hear - read -  what your favorite apps are people. Don't be shy! lol
Cheers!