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#1 2011-01-17 21:26:27

taylorchu
Member
Registered: 2010-08-09
Posts: 405

LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

Another year, another set of awards to give out... More likely than not, we will see many of the same candidates as last year, but given the recent trend in software development I'm expecting to see some new arrivals. Instead of manually adding up the votes like what we did last year, this time we will use Google Docs!

note
1. you don't have to answer all questions; you may leave it blank.
2. please enter the EXACT same package name(or group) shown in the arch package repository.

end date: 12/25/2011 (Santa will announce the overall count of the votes. smile
Santa does not know how to write a bash script, but I do.
The result is pasted below. It is long because many people add their comments or write down the wrong package names.

LnF 2011 result
- Generated by Tai-Lin Chu

Display/Login Managers
  slim: 138
  startx/xinit: 132
  none: 63
  cdm: 13
  lxdm: 12
  gdm: 7
  kdm: 5
  bash: 3
  xorg-xdm: 2
  login: 2
  coreutils: 2
  cdm-git: 2


Tiling Window Managers
  awesome: 87
  xmonad: 58
  dwm: 53
  subtle: 15
  ratpoison: 14
  wmfs: 13
  i3: 11
  wmii: 8
  stumpwm: 4
  scrotwm: 4
  musca: 4
  pytyle: 2
  icewm: 2


Floating Window Managers
  openbox: 207
  fluxbox: 17
  pekwm: 11
  e17: 5
  compiz: 4
  awesome: 4
  xmonad: 3
  fvwm: 3
  sawfish: 2
  kwin: 2
  icewm: 2
  dwm: 2
  compiz-core: 2


Desktop Environments
  xfce: 84
  lxde: 43
  kde: 23
  gnome: 16
  none: 12
  e17: 4
  xmonad: 2
  awesome: 2


Shells
  bash: 268
  zsh: 87
  rxvt-unicode: 6
  dash: 5
  terminal: 2
  ksh: 2
  fish: 2
  bin: 2


Archive Managers
  tar: 124
  xarchiver: 98
  file-roller: 23
  atool: 13
  bsdtar: 11
  p7zip: 8
  xarchive: 6
  ark: 5
  xz: 4
  fileroller: 3
  unzip: 2
  unrar: 2
  squeeze: 2
  bzip2: 2


CD Burners
  xfburn: 31
  cdrkit: 27
  k3b: 23
  brasero: 22
  wodim: 8
  recorder: 7
  bashburn: 7
  graveman: 6
  dd: 3
  simpleburn: 2


CD Rippers
  abcde: 22
  asunder: 19
  rubyripper: 12
  cdparanoia: 9
  dd: 8
  ripperx: 3
  handbrake: 2
  grip: 2
  brasero: 2


Communications Apps
  pidgin: 18
  skype: 16
  irssi: 8
  bitlbee: 8
  mumble: 7
  weechat: 4
  centerim: 3
  linphone: 2
  gvcall: 2
  empathy: 2


Email Clients
  mutt: 91
  thunderbird: 48
  claws-mail: 27
  gmail: 13
  sylpheed: 10
  opera: 5
  alpine: 3
  heirloom-mailx: 2
  gnus: 2
  chromium: 2


File Managers
  thunar: 99
  pcmanfm: 72
  ranger: 68
  coreutils: 38
  mc: 26
  qtfm: 10
  vifm: 8
  dolphin: 7
  xfe: 6
  rox: 5
  none: 5
  nautilus: 5
  zsh: 3
  bash: 3
  tuxcmd: 2
  pcmanfm-mod: 2
  krusader: 2
  emelfm2: 2
  dired: 2


Image Editors (Raster)
  gimp: 189
  mtpaint: 10
  viewnior: 2
  mirage: 2
  imagemagick: 2
  gimp-devel: 2


Image Editors (Vector)
  inkscape: 130
  gimp: 5
  none: 2


Image Viewers
  feh: 136
  mirage: 48
  gpicview: 33
  sxiv: 23
  geeqie: 22
  viewnior: 17
  eog: 11
  gthumb: 7
  gqview: 7
  comix: 7
  ristretto: 4
  qiv: 4
  gwenview: 4
  viewnoir: 2
  okular: 2
  fbv: 2


Instant Messengers
  pidgin: 127
  bitlbee: 39
  centerim: 15
  finch: 10
  emesene: 8
  gajim: 6
  mcabber: 5
  irssi: 4
  empathy: 3
  ekg2: 3
  skype: 2
  psi: 2
  pidgin-light: 2
  kmess: 2


IRC Clients
  irssi: 113
  weechat: 44
  xchat: 25
  pidgin: 5
  ii: 4
  emacs: 3
  opera: 2
  erc: 2
  centerim: 2


Music Players
  mpd: 106
  ncmpcpp: 58
  moc: 30
  mplayer: 22
  deadbeef: 21
  cmus: 19
  audacious: 10
  clementine: 9
  quodlibet: 8
  mocp: 8
  exaile: 7
  vlc: 6
  mpc: 6
  gmusicbrowser: 6
  banshee: 5
  amarok: 5
  gogglesmm: 4
  gmpc: 4
  xmms: 3
  sonata: 3
  xmms2: 2
  smplayer: 2
  qmmp: 2
  mpg123: 2
  herrie: 2
  ario: 2


Network Managers
  wicd: 143
  netcfg: 73
  networkmanager: 21
  ifconfig: 6
  wpa_supplicant: 5
  wifi-select: 2
  wicd-gtk: 2
  rcconf: 2
  netcfg2: 2
  dhcpcd: 2


Office Apps (Spreadsheet/Math)
  libreoffice: 100
  gnumeric: 39
  openoffice: 6
  sc: 3
  r: 3
  googledocs: 3
  vim: 2
  latex: 2
  gap-math: 2
  calc: 2


Office Apps (Word Processing)
  libreoffice: 101
  abiword: 58
  texlive: 11
  latex: 9
  vim: 5
  openoffice: 5
  lyx: 3
  vim-latexsuite: 2
  texmaker: 2
  googledocs: 2


Office Apps (Other)
  libreoffice: 61
  texlive: 4
  vim: 3
  latex: 3
  antiword: 3
  xls2txt: 2
  rtfreader: 2
  openoffice: 2
  odt2txt: 2


Package Managers
  pacman: 220
  yaourt: 68
  packer: 26
  clyde: 12
  pacman-color: 5
  powerpill: 3
  cower: 3
  bauerbill: 3
  packman: 2
  aurget: 2


PDF Readers
  evince: 99
  zathura: 94
  epdfview: 44
  mupdf: 24
  xpdf: 18
  apvlv: 17
  okular: 8
  foxitreader: 4
  evince-gtk: 4
  foxit: 3
  fbpdf-git: 2


RSS Readers
  newsbeuter: 43
  googlereader: 11
  canto: 10
  liferea: 9
  snownews: 8
  thunderbird: 3
  rsstail: 2
  rss: 2
  opera: 2
  centerim: 2


Security/Backup Utilities
  rsync: 60
  tar: 6
  rdiff-backup: 6
  slock: 3
  unison: 2
  ufw: 2
  rsnapshot: 2
  luckybackup: 2
  iptables: 2
  gpg: 2
  duplicity: 2
  dropbox: 2
  coreutils: 2
  clonezilla: 2
  backintime: 2


System Monitors
  htop: 153
  conky: 64
  top: 29
  lxtask: 9
  xfce4-taskmanager: 2
  ps: 2


System Panels/Menus/Trays
  tint2: 89
  dmenu: 20
  lxpanel: 16
  dzen2: 15
  xfce4-panel: 14
  xmobar: 11
  trayer: 7
  pypanel: 6
  dzen: 5
  stalonetray: 4
  conky: 4
  tint: 2
  none: 2
  fbpanel: 2


Terminal Emulators
  rxvt-unicode: 202
  terminal: 26
  xterm: 24
  lxterminal: 21
  terminator: 16
  sakura: 15
  lilyterm: 8
  tilda: 5
  konsole: 5
  st: 4
  rxvt: 4
  roxterm: 4
  gnome-terminal: 4
  tmux: 3
  guake: 3
  urxvtd->urxvtc: 2
  stjerm: 2


Text Editors
  vim: 217
  nano: 35
  geany: 33
  leafpad: 29
  emacs: 26
  gedit: 17
  gvim: 15
  medit: 7
  vi: 6
  scite: 5
  kate: 2
  beaver: 2


Torrent Clients
  rtorrent: 130
  transmission-cli: 72
  deluge: 29
  transmission-gtk: 20
  qbittorrent: 13
  aria2: 11
  ktorrent: 4
  rtorrent-extended: 3
  utorrent: 2
  opera: 2
  fatrat: 2
  btpd: 2


Video Players
  mplayer: 207
  vlc: 89
  smplayer: 34
  mplayer2: 18
  gnome-mplayer: 9
  totem: 2


Web Browsers
  firefox: 137
  chromium: 103
  opera: 25
  luakit: 22
  midori: 19
  jumanji: 15
  uzbl: 13
  google-chrome: 8
  surf: 7
  dwb: 7
  w3m: 4
  links: 3
  elinks: 3
  conkeror: 3
  vimperator: 2
  seamonkey: 2
  netsurf: 2
  luakit-git: 2


Web Utilities
  wget: 20
  openssh: 5
  curl: 4
  youtube-dl: 2
  gmail: 2
  firefox: 2
  dropbox: 2
  aria2: 2


Other Apps
  tmux: 12
  dmenu: 9
  ncdu: 4
  parcellite: 3
  ncmpcpp: 3
  cower: 3
  zim: 2
  volumeicon: 2
  vim: 2
  taskwarrior: 2
  sshfs: 2
  scrot: 2
  pytyle: 2
  keepassx: 2
  imlibsetroot: 2
  geany: 2
  emacs: 2
  eclipse: 2
  conky: 2
  clipit: 2
  clangdmenu: 2
  calibre: 2
  burp: 2


Overall (top 30)
  bash: 268 - Shells
  pacman: 220 - Package Managers
  vim: 217 - Text Editors
  openbox: 207 - Floating Window Managers
  mplayer: 207 - Video Players
  rxvt-unicode: 202 - Terminal Emulators
  gimp: 189 - Image Editors (Raster)
  htop: 153 - System Monitors
  wicd: 143 - Network Managers
  slim: 138 - Display/Login Managers
  firefox: 137 - Web Browsers
  feh: 136 - Image Viewers
  startx/xinit: 132 - Display/Login Managers
  rtorrent: 130 - Torrent Clients
  inkscape: 130 - Image Editors (Vector)
  pidgin: 127 - Instant Messengers
  tar: 124 - Archive Managers
  irssi: 113 - IRC Clients
  mpd: 106 - Music Players
  chromium: 103 - Web Browsers
  libreoffice: 101 - Office Apps (Word Processing)
  libreoffice: 100 - Office Apps (Spreadsheet/Math)
  thunar: 99 - File Managers
  evince: 99 - PDF Readers
  xarchiver: 98 - Archive Managers
  zathura: 94 - PDF Readers
  mutt: 91 - Email Clients
  vlc: 89 - Video Players
  tint2: 89 - System Panels/Menus/Trays
  zsh: 87 - Shells

Last edited by taylorchu (2011-12-27 20:54:06)


"After you do enough distro research, you will choose Arch."

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#2 2011-01-17 23:09:25

pogeymanz
Member
Registered: 2008-03-11
Posts: 1,020

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

I'll go ahead and post a small tidbit here.

I think the release of Xfce4.8 is going to affect the outcomes this year. Thunar and Xfce4-panel are not the lightest in their class but there is NO competition when it comes to the features per bloat ratio.

Also a nod to dmenu-launch, which is basically dmenu_run but pimped out. It parses your .desktop files to get the "nice" name of an app and not just the command you would use to launch it. It also allows you to run a command from a terminal.

Highly recommend,

That is all.

Last edited by pogeymanz (2011-01-17 23:10:31)

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#3 2011-01-18 21:07:18

karabaja4
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 997
Website

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

pogeymanz wrote:

Thunar ... there is NO competition when it comes to the features per bloat ratio.

You might want to try out qtfm - it's in [community].

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#4 2011-01-18 22:46:35

pogeymanz
Member
Registered: 2008-03-11
Posts: 1,020

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

True. Qtfm is amazing for its size. I have played with it several times. It's super-fast, the GUI is highly configurable, custom actions. Pretty awesome. I used to switch between Thunar, PCManFM and QtFM, but these days I'm probably sticking with Thunar thanks to gvfs and network browsing.

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#5 2011-01-19 05:21:28

taylorchu
Member
Registered: 2010-08-09
Posts: 405

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

is there a "gtkfm"?

BTW, it is great to see they finally release xfce4.8.


"After you do enough distro research, you will choose Arch."

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#6 2011-01-19 12:09:00

pogeymanz
Member
Registered: 2008-03-11
Posts: 1,020

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

taylorchu wrote:

is there a "gtkfm"?

BTW, it is great to see they finally release xfce4.8.

I guess PCManFM is the closest thing.

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#7 2011-01-20 10:56:41

twix
Member
Registered: 2010-10-07
Posts: 63

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

I think too, PCManFM is the lightest FM well integrated with gtk

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#8 2011-01-21 02:09:22

cgarcia
Member
Registered: 2010-08-09
Posts: 39

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

twix wrote:

I think too, PCManFM is the lightest FM well integrated with gtk

I just have discovered xfe. I hate the constant Linux evolution towards annoying Windows features, except just for the file explorer. Many users are familiarized with the windows implementation, and daily need to run windows for some tasks. We don't want a revolutionary tool: simply a windows explorer clone with the "expected" behaviour for this concrete task, uniform across systems. Xfe is not exactly the windows explorer, but is close enough, and highly configurable.

Yes, I also have the panel at the bottom :-)

Last edited by cgarcia (2011-01-21 02:17:56)

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#9 2011-01-21 06:49:41

karabaja4
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 997
Website

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

Xfe is ugly, FOX feels... old wink

But really, there's nothing more I'd expect from a file manager which isn't already there in qtfm: custom actions, windows-explorer-like view and "+" expanders (ugh, I hate those big gtk triangles), custom keybindings (!), extremely customizable GUI, fast, etc...

I wonder why so many people dislike QT library (like taylorchu asking for "gtkfm"). It's not like you're polluting your system with some bad libraries or heavy components, it's just a single library from user point of view, very much like GTK is. It even renders ("feels") faster than GTK - IMHO of course. From programmer's point of view, the code is much more high level than GTK and thus much easier to understand (some like low-level code, but that's a topic for another discussion).

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#10 2011-01-21 11:30:16

pogeymanz
Member
Registered: 2008-03-11
Posts: 1,020

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

I like that in Xfe you can switch between the more traditional file manager view and the "commander" style very easily.

At least, I think that was true. It's been a few years since I used Xfe. I actually can't remember why I dropped it.

There are too many good file managers.

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#11 2011-01-25 18:47:48

taylorchu
Member
Registered: 2010-08-09
Posts: 405

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

recently I have tried tiling window manager: dwm + dmenu + ranger.

I really like how they organize the windows, and simplicity of dmenu really made my life easier.

Ranger is really great too. It does not have any icon but works really fast if you know vim. No wonder so many people love it this year.


"After you do enough distro research, you will choose Arch."

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#12 2011-01-25 23:10:44

aeosynth
Member
From: California
Registered: 2010-02-06
Posts: 115
Website

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

my only gripe about ranger is its non-instant startup. rewriting ranger in a faster language is on my todo list.

Is there any way to get a running total of the votes? it *is* a spreadsheet, after all.

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#13 2011-01-25 23:37:02

taylorchu
Member
Registered: 2010-08-09
Posts: 405

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

@aeosynth
I will do the first counting on this Sunday. smile
BTW, I hope ranger is written in C or C++. In addition, some of the file highlight colors are painful for my eyes.


"After you do enough distro research, you will choose Arch."

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#14 2011-01-26 01:57:29

kolbycrouch
Member
Registered: 2008-07-18
Posts: 218

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

karabaja4 wrote:

Xfe is ugly, FOX feels... old wink

But really, there's nothing more I'd expect from a file manager which isn't already there in qtfm: custom actions, windows-explorer-like view and "+" expanders (ugh, I hate those big gtk triangles), custom keybindings (!), extremely customizable GUI, fast, etc...

I wonder why so many people dislike QT library (like taylorchu asking for "gtkfm"). It's not like you're polluting your system with some bad libraries or heavy components, it's just a single library from user point of view, very much like GTK is. It even renders ("feels") faster than GTK - IMHO of course. From programmer's point of view, the code is much more high level than GTK and thus much easier to understand (some like low-level code, but that's a topic for another discussion).

Well i feel like it began with qt3/kde3 most qt3 apps ive seen either depend on kde or dont use your qt3 style(im thinking opera) I think it also has something to do with the fact that qt3 required you to write themes in c++(afaik) after they stopped using pixmaps. I dont know much about qt4 styles though.

qt4 apps are really fast it seems unless they require kdelibs and your not running kde where everything is preloaded. gtk apps are alot more common and easy to theme. I do think the gtk style for qt4 is very nice though.


BTW, is there anyway to change icon themes in qtconfig?

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#15 2011-01-26 12:47:39

karabaja4
Member
From: Croatia
Registered: 2008-09-14
Posts: 997
Website

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

kolbycrouch wrote:

Well i feel like it began with qt3/kde3 most qt3 apps ive seen either depend on kde or dont use your qt3 style(im thinking opera) I think it also has something to do with the fact that qt3 required you to write themes in c++(afaik) after they stopped using pixmaps. I dont know much about qt4 styles though.

qt4 apps are really fast it seems unless they require kdelibs and your not running kde where everything is preloaded. gtk apps are alot more common and easy to theme. I do think the gtk style for qt4 is very nice though.


BTW, is there anyway to change icon themes in qtconfig?

There are lots of apps that use only QT4 as a dependency . QT itself has nothing to do with KDE, it's the KDE apps that use parts of KDE as a dependency, them being written in QT doesn't mean QT depends on KDE. You might also like qtcurve-qt4 style which doesn't depend on any part of KDE.

As for icons, that depends on the application. I think you can't set icons from qtconfig directly but most of my QT apps respect icons I set from lxappearance (the GTK ones).

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#16 2011-02-08 09:45:50

taylorchu
Member
Registered: 2010-08-09
Posts: 405

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

bumped. I posted some results today. (2011/02/08)


"After you do enough distro research, you will choose Arch."

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#17 2011-02-18 06:29:09

adamlogan
Member
Registered: 2010-01-29
Posts: 38

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

taylorchu wrote:

recently I have tried tiling window manager: dwm + dmenu + ranger.

I really like how they organize the windows, and simplicity of dmenu really made my life easier.

Ranger is really great too. It does not have any icon but works really fast if you know vim. No wonder so many people love it this year.

Same here, just started using dwm + dmenu. Will try ranger for awhile, from first glance it seems very nice. Not sure what it has to offer compared to vimfm tho. So far I'm really happy with the simplicity/minimalism of this combination.

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#18 2011-02-22 03:36:12

Fruity
Member
Registered: 2009-12-16
Posts: 198

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

Not sure how anyone can vote for the best of anything only 2 months into a year? 6-8 odd months down the line, maybe.

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#19 2011-02-28 22:46:57

davidm
Member
Registered: 2009-04-25
Posts: 371

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

Hard to argue with newsbeuter for a RSS reader. I only recently had the pleasure of coming across it. After a couple days I don't miss Akregator or Liferea one bit. It more than fulfills my needs and is blazing fast as a console application.

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#20 2011-03-01 00:46:39

steve___
Member
Registered: 2008-02-24
Posts: 452

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

I like to use 'rss2email-xdg-git' with fdm then use my mail client to read rss feeds.

To add an rss feed just append the url to $HOME/.config/r2e/feeds

In fdm.conf I have something like this:

## mail spool dir -- $HOME/.mail
$mail   = "%h/.mail"

## mail dir for mailing lists and rss feeds
$ml-rss = "${mail}/ml-rss"

## An action definition
action "r-arch"         maildir "${ml-rss}/arch"

## Some match rules
match "^From:.*Arch.*" in headers action "r-arch"
match "^From:.*Recent News" in headers action "r-arch"

Last edited by steve___ (2011-03-01 00:47:14)

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#21 2011-03-04 22:14:49

edma2
Member
Registered: 2009-08-20
Posts: 66

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

Here's a vote for rexima, a sleek little volume mixer. It's in [community].
Very minimalistic and fast, much more "lightweight" than alsamixer in my opinion.

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#22 2011-03-29 21:33:21

stozi
Member
Registered: 2010-03-02
Posts: 149

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

smplayer? I thought qt was kinda counter to the arch way, no?

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#23 2011-04-12 13:35:21

Rasi
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2007-08-14
Posts: 1,914
Website

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

stozi wrote:

smplayer? I thought qt was kinda counter to the arch way, no?

I dont know, maybe you should ask some of the many arch developers that use KDE?


He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

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#24 2011-04-12 18:09:18

natostanco
Member
Registered: 2008-01-07
Posts: 126

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

edma2 wrote:

Here's a vote for rexima, a sleek little volume mixer. It's in [community].
Very minimalistic and fast, much more "lightweight" than alsamixer in my opinion.

for 1 soundcard it's good enough.

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#25 2011-04-13 23:04:05

masteryod
Member
Registered: 2010-05-19
Posts: 433

Re: LnF Awards 2011 - The best Light & Fast apps of 2011

great initiative smile am I missing music player category?

stozi wrote:

smplayer? I thought qt was kinda counter to the arch way, no?

the Arch way is simplicity* and choice, not forcing to use light apps because they are light by definition, you can choose and use whatever you like and Arch is providing great posibility to do this

*simplicity from developer/advanced user point of view - and the more I use Arch, the more I like this point of view

Last edited by masteryod (2011-04-13 23:10:10)

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