Well, I recently made the switch to linux and was ecstatic when I found out there was a version of Opera available for it. I downloaded it, installed it with ease, and the first thing I needed to do was get flash working. I simply can't. I installed the plugin from the synaptic package manager, i did it via the tar.gz package from Adobe's site, yet nothing. I get a gray panel where the flash content is supposed to be, but nothing ever loads. Argh. I really don't want to use the buggy, slow Firefox. If anyone can help, drop me a line in the comment of this post or in my inbox. Ill be posting in the forum as well.

Hi. Figured I'd do a little feature, and the theme is my top 8 favorite applications. I'll list what my personal favorites are and explain a little why I chose them. So WFA (without further ado...)


FIREFOX | Web Browser. Take back the web! | http://www.firefox.com
I use firefox alot, actually, and sometimes more than Opera (mainly because of small nuances yet to be fixed in the latest version of Opera) and there's nothing bad I can really say about it. While Opera is considerably more light in memory and CPU usage than Firefox, Firefox isn't as slow as alot of people would have you believe. I mean perhaps it's because we actually have PCs that were made sometime this millenium, but what do I know? Anyway, there are lots of very useful extensions for firefox that gives it somewhat of an edge over Opera, and it has alot more customization options too in its about:config pages. As far as rendering goes, they both render the exact same for me. Rendering speed is the same, as well as browsing speed.

THUNDERBIRD | Email/RSS Client. | http://www.mozilla.org
Thunderbird is a very good email client. It integrates especially well with GMAIL, but I don't know how well it works with other email services. Like Firefox, the customization lets you control nearly everything you'd ever want to, such as how often your client checks the server for new messages, and it can even learn how to handle junk mail all on its own. You might say "Why not just use Outlook?" and to that I say "Outlook isn't even available on all standard Windows installations." Not only that, but Outlook doesn't have plugins. I can download a plugin for Thunderbird that'll minimize my client to the system tray whenever it's closed/minimize, so it can be open all day and I can catch emails as soon as they arrive without the need to have the window open all day (Like some earlier versions of outlook).

iTunes | Music Library and Organization / Player. | http://www.itunes.com
I own an iPod, plain and simple. iTunes lets me organize my music library the way that I need to, so that everytime I synch it with my iPod, it corresponds exactly to how my iTunes library looks. Podcasts information (like podcasts you have yet to listen to, your last known position in the podcast) is updated automatically and synchs back and forth with the iPod and iTunes accordingly. I can also make sure that cover flow won't break when I transfer my library to my iPod. Sometimes, cover flow will make it seem like you have hundreds of albums, when really there are just a few albums and it's representing each song with a separate cover. So I use iTunes to fix the tags on ALL my MP3 songs so that songs are grouped accordingly.

WinAmp | Music Library and Organization / Player. | http://www.winamp.com
Despite the fact that iTunes plays my music, I only use it for organization purposes. I use WinAmp for playing purposes. Winamp allows you to download, install, or create as many plugins as you like, and the EQ system is alot better than most programs. WinAmp is also a very fast program, so the term bloatware cannot be associated with it (like iTunes admittedly can). All of my installed music codecs are recognized in WinAmp (unlike iTunes and WMP somtimes) so I know I can play any file that I need when I need to. Winamp also plays videos, but I reserve another program to play my videos.

VLC Media Player | Versatile Media Player | http://www.videolan.org
I use VLC to play ANY video file I ever come across. This player literally comes with everything you need to start watching tons of different file formats right away. I've yet to need to download any sort of video codecs because with the installation of VLC, I can watch every popular codec out there. VLC still has problems with streaming video, however, but I just use WMP for those purposes. If ever I tried to play a file and it wouldn't work in WMP, I'd usually open it up in VLC and just know that it will play with no problem (and it usually does).

Pidgin | Multi-Protocol Messaging Client | http://www.pidgin.im
Pidgin is the greatest instant messaging program I've ever had the pleasure of using, simply because of the sheer amount of protocols you can use with it. You may be thinking "Why not use trillian?" Well, while trillian does have more support for the separate multimedia/file sharing features as the individual protocols it supports, I'll take the more robust list of protocols I can use any day. Alogn with what I like to call "The Big Three" (AIM, MSN/Windows Live, and YahooIM), Pidgin supports such clients as Jabber, Google Talk, Skype, MySpace IM, ICQ, and more! There are protocols I've never even heard of. And as I said earlier, the only downside to Pidgin is that it sucks for file sharing, direct connections to share photos, talk features, video features, etc, but it will perform most basic functions that you should every need in an IM client anyway: TEXT!

Opera | Web Browser. | http://www.opera.com
I love Opera for the simple fact that it's fast, fun, efficient, and just very cool. It combines a very sleek interface with such resource efficient implementation to create one of the greatest browsers ever. I'm not sure what rendering engine it uses, but page renders are (almost) always flawless in Opera. There are a few problems though, like how it handles Java/Script, and that it won't properly communicate with your standalone email/rss client (Thunderbird) when you want it to, but I can live through these small nuances for now. Opera also has an about:config type deal, although not as robust as firefox's, but it gives you enough to customize the browser the way you need to and if I'm not mistaken, you can even write your own scripts for it. So Firefox has extensions, but what does Opera have? Opera has widgets, which are like extensions, but I don't really like its implementation too much. Alot of bad and pointless widgets get put out, and alot of them don't support docking of the widgets (as far as I've tried, at least) so they sometimes just get in the way, but it's cool to have all your RSS feeds and emails floating about. Not all of the widgets are pointless though, because when you find a GREAT widget, it really is GREAT. Even with its faults, it stands far above Firefox. I normally don't have to worry about random memory leaks (I KNOW memory will leak everytime I come across JA/JS content) nor do I ever have to worry about RAM/CPU usage randomly climbing.

CCleaner | System Cleaning and Optimization | http://www.ccleaner.com
CCleaner is a very great program, in that it allows you to clean out your system, and even individual programs within the same program. I run CCleaner once a week and usually find to have tons of temporary files stored in my hard drive, taking up even gigabytes of space. CCleaner helps protect you in that it gives you 5 different levels of file deletion: From a simple one-time delete to a Department of Defense mutliple overwrite. I'm not too particular sure how effective the DoD mode is, exactly, but something about knowing my files are being deleted and written over multiple times gives me that extra bit of security and privacy. You can set it to clean out whatever parts of your system taht you'd like. It automatically recognizes programs like FireFox, Opera, and adds them to the applications section accordingly, so you don't have to delete ALL cookie files on a computer, just ones from specific browsers or none at all. On top of all of this, CCleaner helps you to identify broken, duplicate, or just plain bad registry keys/entries and helps you fix them as well. For duplicates, it'll get rid of all the duplicates. For bad/nonexistant entries, it'll just delete them, and it gives you a small descript of which key/entry it is, so you can be sure of what you're deleting/fixing before you do it. I don't know if this makes much of a different, but I do the Registry Cleaning once a week as well just to be sure.

Well, those are the top 8 applications that I use in my everyday life. You may seem multiple types in the list (like multiple web browsers and media players) but this is because each one offers some different functionality that I need it specifically for. So all in all, I really only use 5 types of programs: Media, Web, Messaging, Email, and System Optimization. I use more programs, but not on a daily basis, and I will be getting into some great free applications to have on your PC in a future blog post. Until next time! Thanks for reading.