This page describes the software I am using in my daily work. Almost all the software are in GNU/Linux environment, and a lot of software are developed for GNU project. It is a collection of essential and top quality software.
Linux distribution: Debian. I started using Linux by installing Redhat 5.0 on a 486 PC in 1998, and kept using Redhat until Redhat 6.0. I switched to Debian primarily because it promises to be upgradable. I never switched to other distros since then. I am currently using Debian testing. Most of the software listed below are installed as Debian packages, which are maintained by voluntary and competent Debian developers.
Linux kernel: 2.6.22 with the debian patches. Kerneltrap is a good news web for kernel stuff.
Text editor: Emacs. Emacs is not only a text editor. It is used for almost everything to do with text. It is my development environment (FORTRAN mode, compile, gdb debugging), email and newsgroup client, documentation reader (Man pages and Info files), RPN calculator, Calendar/Diary, Dictionary. I like Vim, too, and use it for short and quick job. Viper mode is used in Emacs to simulate Vi.
FORTRAN compiler: Intel FORTRAN Compiler. IFC is free for personal and academic use. G77 is also used sometimes.
Data visualizing tool: Gnuplot. xmgrace. Gri is also good for some tasks (such as contour plots).
Technical writing tool: Latex. Auctex is used in Emacs to edit/check/compile/view latex files. Bibtex is used to manage references. Aspell for spelling check.
Presentation: beamer a LaTex class. an example
Unix shell: Zsh plus Screen. Bash is used in scripting.
File manager: vifm and Midnight commander in Screen sessions.
Web browser: Mozilla-firebird and Opera. Opera is not open source software, but it is a decent browser.
Email: Emacs/MH-E . Mutt is used to preview new incoming email. Then, trivial email is deleted in mutt, and other email is read/replied in MH-E. spamassian is used for battling spam.
Newsgroup and mailing list reader: Emacs/Gnus. Procmail is used for sorting emails from subscribed mailing lists.
Window manager: Currently using Ion3. Ion3 Screenshot. Long time favorite: Fvwm. Fvwm2 screenshot
Data extracting tool: Python. switched from Perl.
Backup tool: Rsync. It is used to backup data on my laptop to a hard disk in another Linux desktop machine through network. From my experience, hard disks on laptop are prone to die. This backup strategy had saved me once with a disk was dying when a conference paper was due in a week.
Instant-messaging: Unix Talk. It is really "instant-messaging", you can see the other party typing. (not used much these days)
Numerical computation: Octave is constantly getting better.Numerical computation: MATLAB. Rarely used nowadays (using octave instead), only when GUI interface is needed.
Algebra computation: Maple. Mathematica is also equally good, but I learned Maple first, and I have a lot of codes written in Maple. There are a few open source projects of algebra computation, but it seems none is as powerful as these commercial ones yet.
MS windows emulation: vmware. Used to use Win4Lin 9x. A very well-written software though for an unfavorable task (rarely used now, new kernel patch unavailable).
Grammar checker: Wordperfect/grammatik under Win4Lin. It is a "better than nothing" software because there are not a lot choices in this area. A copy of wordperfect is included in a Dell computer I bought, I may not buy it if otherwise. A grammar check is, however, helpful for a non-native English speaker who are not good at grammar (as probably already shown in this page). It can spot some errors and ill-written sentences (it can also generate errors). I hope some open source projects appear in the future in this field. Considering it is a quite involved task, the hope is not high. Learning to master English grammar seems to be a better route.
Infrared on Thinkpad T23. Howto: transfer cellular phone pictures to T23 running Linux with Infrared.
