May 30, 2008

3 GTK Applications I Need on a Daily Basis

Updated: May 30, 2008

I was never a fan of GTK applications, at least not since I have switched to KDE (over 2 years now). But there are at least three GTK applications that I need on a day-to-day basis.

1. Firefox

I consider this to be the best of all web browsers. The most important things that I love about it are:
- ability to display correctly almost any web page
- support for themes (I'm currently using Noia 2.0 Extreme - wonderful theme)
- support for extensions: StumbleUpon and DownloadHelper add-ons
- simple, clean, intuitive and customisable interface
- highly configurable

Firefox using the Noia Extreme theme


2. XChat

I've been loving IRC for many years now, and to be honest, the only client that fulfils my needs is XChat. Some of the highlights I really like about it:
- uses a low quantity of memory
- supports scripting languages like Perl, Python
- C plugin interface (I just love this one)
- highly configurable through /SET variables (like the conference mode, for example)

XChat - Connected to Freenode, #ubuntuforums channel


One disadvantage it has is bad icon integration in KDE's system tray (I think it has to do with the fact that the icon is not available as a standalone image, but is included in the XChat code - not very sure about it, though)

3. LinuxDC++

This is the port of DC++ for Windows, which is licensed under the GPL. When using it on hubs with 1000+ users, the interface becomes slow as hell, but I prefer it over Valknut anyway. It has all the features one needs in order to use Direct Connect for sharing files at full potential.

LinuxDC++ 1.0.1

6 comments:

Craciun Dan said...

I really didn't know that, thanks for pointing out. I really thought Firefox is a GTK application.

Anonymous said...

Firefox is not a Gnome application, but it is indeed a GTK+ application, even though it uses XUL to define its UI.

Btw, have you tried Konversation for IRC Client? :D

Craciun Dan said...

Yes, actually I have some short reviews about it, like this one here, but it doesn't have (yet) event-based scripting (you know, when somebody joins do something etc). But it's nice overall. I'm use to check the Konversation homepage every once in a while, but it wasn't updated for several months now.

Anonymous said...

Yes, all three of them are GTK applications but none of them require the Gnome libraries. All Gnome apps are GTK apps but not all GTK apps are Gnome apps.

Craciun Dan said...

I changed the article accordingly, and replaced GNOME with GTK. Thanks for the feedback.

Anonymous said...

Those three in my case would be Firefox, Thunderbird and GNU Cash.