Arch Linux

horrormaster

Member

Registered: 2009-04-12

Posts: 23

Program Suggestions

Been a good two years or so since I've used GNU/Linux and am lost at the programs to use. I have a few that I either used on Windows or just remember from others posting about them. Even if I have one, better suggestions are welcomed. Using Arch x86_64 and XFCE as the environment. I can handle cli programs if they're easy enough, but graphical is always preferred. I would like to avoid installing WINE if at all possible.

Flash: gnash-common
Java: openjdk
Audio Player: [needs to support enhanced CDs, mp3, wav, and flac support would be great too]
Printing: CUPS
Scanning: XSane
File Archiving: [something like Peazip or 7-Zip would be nice, everything else has limited options]
Audio Ripper: [needs to support mp3, wav, and flac would be a plus]
Video Ripper: [something like DVDShrink would be nice, needs to support episode ripping]
ISO Burner: [something to erase DVDs and CDs as well as burn ISOs and create them from discs]
PDF Viewer: [Firefox plugin support would be nice as well]

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: Program Suggestions

Flash: gnash-common or Adobe Flash (but they recently dropped support for 64 bit)
Java: openjdk  or jdk (sun)
Audio Player: [needs to support enhanced CDs, mp3, wav, and flac support would be great too] DeaDBeeF (not sure if it supports all your requirements, but its nice and lightweight. Does what it is supposed to without being too much of a hog
Printing: CUPS
Scanning: XSane
File Archiving: [something like Peazip or 7-Zip would be nice, everything else has limited options] Since you are using XFCE - try out Squeeze or XArchiver or XArchive
Audio Ripper: [needs to support mp3, wav, and flac would be a plus] abcde, Asunder, grip, rubyripper,or cdparanoia or even k3b(but that means getting all the kde dependencies as well
Video Ripper: [something like DVDShrink would be nice, needs to support episode ripping] search me
ISO Burner: [something to erase DVDs and CDs as well as burn ISOs and create them from discs] recorder, or simply CLI tools
PDF Viewer: [Firefox plugin support would be nice as well]evince, epdfview, zathura, xpdf (although xpdf has a dated look n feel)

Last edited by Inxsible (2010-06-21 23:17:32)

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Peanut

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2009-05-24

Posts: 99

Re: Program Suggestions

You might want to check out the wiki entry and forum thread on lightweight applications, and the wiki entry on common apps.

Archiver: I believe Squeeze is the official archiver for XFCE, but you should also consider File-roller and Xarchiver. If you work in the command line from time to time, atool is gold. Remember that these are just frontends to command line archivers, don't forget to install support for individual formats by installing the packages zip, unzip, rar, p7zip, etc.

PDF Viewer: both Evince and EPDFView should integrate nicely in XFCE, although I don't believe any of them have browser plugins. The official Acrobat Reader has a Linux version with a browser plugin, but it might feel a bit heavy. If you're familiar with the keyboard shortcuts of the editor Vi, Zathura is great.

electricaltape

Member

From: New River Valley

Registered: 2010-04-24

Posts: 20

Re: Program Suggestions

I am a GNOME fanboy (you should have most of the dependencies already too), so I recommend sound juicer for ripping audio CDs. It gets metadata nicely (it connects to an online database to pull out info), but I don't really know anything about enhanced CDs.

Don't forget about a text editor! There are many editor threads floating around, so let us not open that pandora's box here

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Wintervenom

Member

Registered: 2008-08-20

Posts: 1,011

Re: Program Suggestions

Java: Try OpenJDK first, then if you tend to have problems with it freezing up, then try the Oracle/Sun Java Runtime Environment.
Audio Player: MPD + GMPC/Ncmpcpp/Sonata/DMPC/etc.
File Archiving: File Roller.  It covers everything, and is lightweight.
ISO Burner: Graveman.  There's also a light version of Brasero in the AUR.
PDF Viewer: ePDFview.  It has no native browser plug-in, but you could use Mozplugger for that.

Last edited by Wintervenom (2010-06-22 01:31:00)

IgnorantGuru

Member

Registered: 2009-11-09

Posts: 640

Website

Re: Program Suggestions

Flash: I use Adobe 64 bit when absolutely necessary, behind NoScript and FlashBlock (Firefox addons) and sandfox

Audio Player: mplayer (with smplayer frontend), and also VLC

File Archiving: Personally I use a chooser script from within my file manager for most archiving.  That way I can do it fast and can customize the script with any archive formats and options I want.  Likewise, I use an xtract script associated in my file manager so I can click on any archive and it is instantly extracted into a subfolder - no interaction.  Also, if you want 7-Zip support it's p7zip, although I think xz is a more linux friendly and capable implementation of lzma2.

Audio Ripper: Asunder is pretty good, although I'm still shopping.

Video Ripper: I use mplayer, usually through ripdvd

ISO Burner: I wrote a custom script for burning  (which I haven't shared) that does it with CLI commands, which I found to be the easiest and most reliable method.  Graveman and Brasero are also decent.

PDF Viewer: Evince

You might also check out the list of apps I used to replace KDE when I dropped it.

Welcome to Arch.

Last edited by IgnorantGuru (2010-06-22 02:27:40)

quigybo

Member

Registered: 2009-01-15

Posts: 223

Re: Program Suggestions

Since you are using xfce I would suggest looking at the goodies project, there is a few decent apps in there, for one since you are looking for a burner I can recommend xfburn.

There is also a few sites around wih a list of linux equivalents to windows software, eg. linuxalt.

Flash: flashplugin (Adobe)
Audio Player: mpd + sonata
File Archiving: I tried squeeze but now prefer xarchiver
Audio Ripper: I don't know about ripping, but easytag is great for editing ID3 tags (automatic filenames, tag processing etc.).
ISO Burner: xfburn
PDF Viewer: evince (I prefer zathura, but that is mostly keyboard based)