Utilities. They’re what help make computing a lot easier and more convenient, no matter what operating system you use.
Linux users are spoiled when it comes to utilities. Command line utilities. GUI utilities. There’s a small (and sometimes not so small) application that can help you do a job quickly and easily.
Here’s a look at some of the utilities that I find useful.
Application: myTinyToDo
Replaces: Ta-da List, Remember the Milk, Todoist, Toodledoo
Description: Tasks. Who among us doesn’t have more than a few of them? Keeping track of your tasks can be difficult. That’s where a good to-do list comes in handy.
Of course, everyone has a different way of dealing with their to-do lists. Some people like paper. Some like apps for their desktop computers or mobile devices. Others turn to the Web. If you have a little space on a Web server, then myTinyToDo is a nice, simple option.
At the end of October, I’ll be helping to run a FLOSS Manuals book sprint at Toronto Open Source Week. The sprint will be a two-day event to help write the manual for the Thunderbird email client.
You can read more about the sprint here.
If you’re in the Toronto area and are interested in participating, leave a comment on this post to toss me a DM on identi.ca or Twitter. If you aren’t in Toronto, you can still join in online.
Application: clearBudget
Replaces: Tick, PearBudget, BudgetTracker
Description: Money goes in. Money goes out. More of it seems to go out than come in, doesn’t it? clearBudget can help you track your expenses and income.
Sure, you can do the same thing in a spreadsheet. But doing that can be difficult, especially if more than one person – say your spouse or business partner – needs to enter information into the spreadsheet. That’s where something like clearBudget is a sanity saver.
As I’ve chronicled elsewhere, I do a lot of writing with a wiki. In my case, DokuWiki. It’s not just an environment for me to work in (although that’s a big part of it). I’ve also used my wiki for collaborating with other writers.
I use wikis for planning, taking notes, and writing. Nothing else. To make those jobs more efficient, I needed to customize my instance of DokuWiki. That was fairly easy. The community supporting DokuWiki have created everything I need to do that job.
Here’s a look at how I turned my instance of DokuWiki into a writing environment.
Audio files. Video. They’ve become … well, if not an essential part of our computing then a common part of it. I can’t think of anyone, regardless of their level of abilities with any operating system, who doesn’t regular listen to and watch audio and video.
I’m one of them. But I tend to get files in proprietary formats. Whenever possible (OK, always!) I try to convert those proprietary formats into free ones. Like Ogg Vorbis or FLAC instead of MP3 or Ogg Theora rather than WMV.
Over the years, I’ve tried a number of utilities for converting audio and video to other formats. Which, incidentally, is why I love the free/Open Source software world — there’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to applications and you can find something that fits your needs.
Back to those conversion applications. Some were really good. Others, not all that great. Here are the two applications that I currently use.