Nobody wants to use an operating system. They just want it be able to run the software they need. Therefore, its very important for an OS to have killer apps. Here’s a list of software that make Linux worth using.
1. Apache
Needs no introduction. The legendary web server app that probably almost every website runs on. If you even try to compare this with Microsoft’s IIS, I’m just going to burst out laughing my ass off.
2. Synaptic/Adept/YUM
How do 90% of computer users (the current windows + mac market share) even use their computers without a package manager ? Before switching to Linux, I was warned that installing software was going to be very very difficult and that alone would make me want to crawl back to my hda1 partition. The guy who said that has obviously never hurd (pun intended) of package managers.
3. Konqueror
Window File Managers simply cannot get better than this. Konqueror’s competitors - Finder and Explorer are nowhere near as good as it is. I would have try to describe the features, but there are just too many to write about. Check the wikipedia article for those details.
4. Beryl/Compiz
After 2 months of Beryl on my Ubuntu box, I can’t dream of a world without wobbly windows. Not to mention the Blur, Water, Desktop Cube, Animations, Trailfocus, Expose-like features, and Fading Windows. Makes me feel sorry for Windows users who have to stare at Luna everyday.
5. AmaroK
Brilliant music player that kicks iTunes proverbial bckside in every respect. Features include Podcasts, Internet Radio, Lyrics, Wikipedia information about the currently artist, and probably a zillion more that i haven’t discovered yet. Highly extensible with scripts and themes. The recent release also features a music store for digital music downloads (with free codeviews).
6. K3b
Windows users would say Nero is way better than K3b in terms of features and I would be forced to agree. But why the hell does a person who just wants to burn some discs also need a media player, an always-on media cataloging software, audio editor and other useless crap bundled ? K3b does what its supposed to do from a good interface and does it perfectly.
7. Apollon (frontend for giFT)
This program that surprisingly few people use is the best P2P software out there without doubt. I’ll just say this - it supports the FastTrack, Gnutella, Ares and OpenFT networks and has no added spyware. Now, if you need more convincing than that, you deserve to have your system “Kazaa-d”.
8. MPlayer + MEncoder
MPlayer is that media player that you’ve always wanted - the one that can play absolutely anything and doesn’t cost an arm, a leg and a couple of toes. And if you’re part of “the scene” there’s no better software than MEncoder to to rip those DVDs, and convert them to AVIs. And if you’re not hardcore geek enough to handle the command-line interface there are about a couple of thousand GUIs for these two programs floating around the net.
9. Deskbar
The Deskbar applet for the Gnome Panel searches liles and folders, Wikipedia, browser bookmarks and history, dictionary, Del.icio.us, address book contacts, Gmail and opens programs, web pages and even triples as a calculator. If you find another Search+Launcher+Calculator program, tell me.
10. Screem HTML/XML Editor
Yes I’ve used Dreamweaver and its very easy to use and all but if you want to really become a good web designer, you need to get rid of the WYSISWYG and actually look at the code that you put in. With Screem, you can use the markup you want rather than what the application thinks you need.
There are a lot of other programs for Linux that are really great (Firefox, OpenOffice.org, VLC Player) but they have Windows versions too and don’t qualify as killer apps for Linux. (EDIT: Apache is an exception. Although it runs on Windows and other operating systems too, it is almost always used as part of the LAMP configuration which invloves Linux)
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