My favourite tools

So, I was musing about what to blog next and had this idea of posting all the utilities/programs/services I frequently use and of course thank the person who influenced me with the software. I’m rather obsessed with many of these tools and if you think a tool you use is better than what I use, ping me @borncrusader at twitter or identi.ca 🙂 We’ll debate about it and possibly I’ll learn about the tool you use too. 😛

1. __Operating System __– Linux, for sure. 🙂 I was using Windows till my 4th year of college to sneak in for a game or two. Now that my interest in gaming (at least playing them) has waned, I’m on Linux for almost the whole day (both office and home). Thanks to MIT seniors for introducing me to Linux.
2. __Quick Do-it-yourself tool __– If you are on a Linux system, what tool would you want other than the default shell, to achieve tasks really quick. The shell I prefer is bash as it is feature-rich. I don’t mind it’s bloated nature as I believe I have the hardware to handle it. Again thanks to the seniors.
3. __Terminal __– konsole with screen. Thanks to Lakshman (my mentor).
4. __General Purpose Programming Language __– I’m talking about a compiled language and there is no competitors here. C/C++ definitely wins hands down. Mm.. Whom do I thank here? These languages were literally forced down our throats while starting to code. Probably the thanks should go to K&R and Stroustrup.
5. __General Purpose Programming Language (Interpreted) __– So, you need to get something done really quick and don’t want to use the shell. An interpreted language would come to your rescue and in my case, it was perl. But slowly I’m moving to python only because of it’s cleanliness when compared to perl. Thanks to Yahoo! I learnt perl while preparing for Y! placements. Sad that they didn’t come. Lucky that I got placed at Starent only a couple of days ahead of Y! scheduled date.
6. __Web Browser __– Firefox is the winner here. No competitors here. You might argue that Chrome is better. No way… Firefox with all its addons wins it hands down. So, who introduced me to firefox??? No idea!!! 😦 So the thanks goes to Mozilla. Speaking about addons, these are my favourite addons for firefox.

*   vimperator – this one was a life changing addon for me. The addon that makes firefox behave like vim. Thanks to Lakshman for this.
*   xmarks – the best bookmarks sync software. Weave didn’t work for me.. 😦 Thanks to Sriram (my colleague) for it. Didn’t try the password sync feature, yet.
*   DataFox – used to check amount of downloaded data for the month for BSNL connections. Very useful. No idea who recommended this to me. Guess it is google.

7. __Text Editor __– vim. Thanks again to Lakshman for reintroducing vim to me.
8. __Twitter/Identi.ca client __– Choqok integrates perfectly well into KDE. The best choice. Thanks to identi.ca site for pointing to this excellent software.
9. __Music Player __– Ha.. KDE4 and the answer for this is amarok!
10. __Movie Player __– VLC definitely. Also mplayer.
11. __Online Cloud Storage __– Had real headache with Ubuntu One. So, switched to Dropbox. Will migrate back to Ubuntu One when it is stable. Thanks again to Lakshman for this.
12. __Chat Client __– pidgin. For it’s plethora of features and plugins. Works with skype too with D-Bus. Thanks for Lakshman again for the skype tip. 🙂
13. __eMail Client __– thunderbird. Ha. Again thanks to Mozilla.
14. __Bittorrent Client __– Vuze. Then Azureus, and now Vuze. Works really fast and looks beautiful.
15. Virtualization – VirtualBox from Sun. Really stunning and great. Thanks to Prithivi for recommending it.
16. __Office Tool __– OpenOffice
17. __CD-DVD Burner __– k3b. KDE again.
18. __Document reader __– Okular for PDF and xchm for CHM files.
19. __Image Editor __– Gimp
20. __Dictionary __– Artha. Based on wordnet.
21. __Mail __– GMail. No doubts here.
22. __Social Networking __– twitter, identi.ca, orkut, facebook and linkedin and now wave.
23. __Cricket __– Cricinfo. 🙂
24. __Search Engine __– Google and collecta for realtime search
25. __Blogging Platform __– Blogger, then WordPress and now Tumblr. What’ll be next?

Whoa! A lot of opensource softwares in there! If the OSS industry became proprietary tomorrow. 😮 Don’t want to imagine that!!! This list will be updated regularly. So do check back!

Sayonara!