Noteworthy GUI tools

Okay, so GUIs are here to stay. And if I must use one, at least I should have some tools that make my time with GUIs a little easier. There are so many GUI applications available and a lot of them are noteworthy, but here are a few we feel highlight the points.

KDE and GNOME

Setting aside any personal biases, both of these desktops have achieved respect from every corner of the Linux (and Unix in general) community (with the possible exception of Jeremy). Even some commercial Unix vendors are moving from the commercial CDE to KDE or GNOME. The authors of both desktop systems and accompanying applications should be commended for their hard work. And regardless of political debate, it's great to be able to pick and choose the user interface for our Linux systems.

Blackbox

Blackbox is the leanest, meanest window manager out there. Programmed in a mere 50,000 lines of code, and nowhere near a 1.0 release, it has stability and speed to which Gnome 2.0 and KDE 3.0 will still be aspiring. It's very easily configured, it uses all three mouse buttons , and themes can be whipped up in three or four minutes. (Ever tried to whip up an Enlightenment theme? Good luck!) For sub-1-Ghz systems, blackbox is the ideal window manager. Available from http://blackbox.alug.org/ .

The GIMP

The GIMP has been one of Free Software's champions for a while now. Not only does this GPL'ed application deliver amazing quality, it comes with oodles of support, third-party add-ons, and heaps of documentation. You would be hard pressed to find a graphics manipulation program of a higher caliber than the GIMP.

Dia

Diagramming has come to Linux in the form of Dia. Use Dia to whip out that flowchart for your boss who can't read code. And don't worry, your boss will never figure out that you keep handing over the same flowchart each time. This is just a little trick of the trade I like to share from time to time.

XMMS

XMMS is the cross-platform multimedia system, as mentioned in Chapter 20 , Music Production, and Chapter 24 , Video Production. It's the king of Linux multimedia players for a reason. Use it, love it.

xv

When you just want to peek at a graphics file and not edit it, xv is the tool for it. Again, it runs on pretty much all flavors of Unix, it does very, very nice screen captures (Mike and Jeremy did nearly all of their screenshots using xv), it supports PNG, JPG, GIF, and most everything else.