Linux has a lot of applications. One application cannot work (may be caused by some updates like Java Runtime Environment, or some other libraries), we still can choose the others.

The following is the list of my favourite applications.

Text editors

jEdit is my favourite, because it can split into multiple view, instead of two views with either horizontal and vertical. It is cross-platform, available in Windows. There are a lot of plugins available. But the limitation is that it depends on the Java Runtime Environment.

just a small notes to share… well, not everybody will agree with me, or everybody will have the same taste… see, I do write my journal, or whatever you call it… now, I’ve revereted back to write my own real “private” journal… ie. Less things to be shared in the public, but purely, just for my own consumption… ^_^, with the thought of… one day, when I’m not in this real world anymore, my family, my children, will read it… if they will like to know more about me, about my life… ya, for me, and for my family… anyway… so, I’ve used quite a couple of tools available, (mainly free) I used outlook’s journal before, then, I changed to #Microsoft #OneNotes, I love this tools, however, it’s licensed, ie. Not free, and it’s only for windows PC, but I’ve some mobile devices, and I’m using a linux machine mainly, so, I was looking up and down, trying to find the best tools to use… for my journaling… I tried some tools on linux too, but then, I don’t like the feature, or simply, the look of it… I used #evernote, I love that, next to Microsoft OneNotes, honestly, and I started to put in a lot a lot of notes, regardless it’s my own writing, or notes from the web, or parenting notes, or whatsoever… but then, being a non-paying user, I face another challenge, ie. The data capacity allowance every month, and I don’t like it… ah haha… mainly to be blamed, me, myself… cos, I was dumping so much so much data, and so many so many graphic stuff in there… and it ran out of disk space very fast… so, I was thinking, “hm… this is not a long term solution…”, then, I started to look around on my idevice, after trying a few of them, I used #Journalized for a while, whatever I’m writing, it’ll be sync’ed to the evernote, again, I like it… but then again, in the end, I’m a PC person, I’m a keyboard person… and I’m a multi-windows person… and I’m a big-screen person… whatever… so, I didn’t quite used Journalized… then, I started to put my notes/journal/diary, into words, ya, the very conventional words, but opensourced.. ie. At the moment, #libreoffice, it’s portable, though.. not syncable, but then again, I’m not looking for something syncable anyway, sometimes… it just get out of control, haha… and when I travel? Or when my PC (be it windows, or linux) is not with me, again, come another problem, I’ve tried using dropbox to carry my “file” around, however, I don’t quite like it… then, I used evernote to temporarily to write something… again, I don’t quite like it, though it’s convenient, it’s just that… em… to my taste, it’s slightly “bloated”, I mean using evernote… well, I’m still using it, on and off, for other purpose, not really for writing my diary… and I still love it as it is, ie. Useful… very useful… and I ditched the idea of using dropbox to carry the file around… then… lately, I found a new thing, which, I think is the ultimate solution to my needs… ie. #google sheets, and #google docs, well, I’ve been using all cloud storage all these while, it’s good for sharing docs, and photos, especially after a trip, with friends, with family and so on… and just lately, google has put up these docs/sheets apps on idevice, yeh!!! it’s just so “my choice”… and my ultimate choice.. so, now, whenever I’m on the move, if I need to write or jot down anything, I use these 2… ^_^

As my favourite web browser, Firefox, with the powerful extensions, (in my opinion) no other web browser is better than it. There are a lot of web browsers based on Chromium or using WebKit engine. Namely Google Chrome (based on Chromium), Opera (WebKit engine), Safari (WebKit engine), Konqueror (KDE web browser), Epiphany (currently called Web, GNOME web browser), and other less popular web browsers such as Midori, QupZilla, etc.

However, Firefox uses another layout engine, that is Gecko. That is why the rendering of the webpages may have some differences comparing to the WebKit engine. For the web developers, they can always see the differences.

see… I was trying to play some mp4 file on my sony tablet-s (gen1),

all these while, I’ve been using MX Player and I’ve to say, I’m pretty happy using it…

I’d BS Player installed on my tablet but then, I removed it for the sake of MX Player…

then, till I came across this problem lately…

I tried all sorts of popular/highly rated players on the play store… but then, most of them failed… to play this particular mp4 file…

Adventure Town, a very nice Android game. The game play is similar to most mobile games and online games such as Pixel Tower. The objective is to build up your region, optimise the land usage, earn money, upgrade, wisely use the resource, etc. To simplify, grow everything!

However, there is a great strength comparing to other mobile games and online games. NO internet connection required to play the game. Most of the mobile games required internet connection for user account login or update the game through internet. Without internet connection, you are forced to exit. That means, there is no chance to play the game without internet. However, Adventure Town is totally different.

lately, I was busy trying to cut some DVD/VCD (from my 說說唱唱, by 37.2 度雜貨店)… well… just to keep them in digital form, I do have legit ownership of these DVD/VCD, it’s just that, since we’ve “upgraded” our TV, ie. sony smart TV, we could play mp4 format directly from the thumb drive, that makes things very interesting and a lot easier…

I found some 說說唱唱online, but then, I don’t like the quality, and they’re just small sections of one VCD/DVD, rather than the whole copy of itself,

I  never used MATLAB before, so I don’t know how powerful it is.  In order to plot graph and perform calculation, these are some applications may be interesting,

• R - It is also called R programming language, used for statistics
• Octave - Alternative to MATLAB
• FreeMat - Alternative to MATLAB
• Sage - A large size application, considered as an alternative to Mathematica and MATLAB

Another one I like is Python with SciPy and matplotlib. They are pretty awesome.

If you watch YouTube frequently or occasionally, and you have not a very fast internet connection, YouTube Center surely is what you will like.

Quite a long time, I found that YouTube does not work like before. I cannot pause the video and wait downloading the video completely then only watch it. Now, the video will download a while then stop downloading. Besides that, navigate to different time frame will need to re-download the video. As a result, I cannot watch the video freely after downloading to the web browser.

Portable applications, from portableapps.com, are really nice.

Though I don’t like Windows, yet portable applications are very useful, because Windows are more common (surely). Furthermore, Linux with wine can work almost perfectly with portable applications.

Prepare one pendrive with these portable applications, run your own web browser with your favourite bookmarks, without a trace on the host computer. This is really nice.

Currently, my pendrive has

• Firefox - Popular web browser
• Pidgin - All-in-one messenger
• Geany - Text editor with code highlighting
• gVim - Powerful text editor, can open large text file
• XnView - Image browser
• SMPlayer - Video player which supports a lot of formats
• GIMP - Best open source image editor
• 7-Zip - File archiver

The above applications are also available on Linux as open source except XnView (which also available in Linux but it is non FOSS as XnView MP).

ok… just yesterday I wanted (desperately) to download something from youku, but then I’m on linuxmint, there isn’t an official client for youku download for this OS, but then again, even if I’ve my windows machine, despite the thunderlite that I’ve installed, I always try my best not to install any software from china, cos, they’re too loaded with other things…

so, I found this “solution”, which is… COOL!!! commandline, but the instruction given is simple to follow… ie. You-Get http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/04/22/you-get-video-download-script-for-youtube-youku-dailymotion-and-more/