This day-after-Thanksgiving, when many Americans are enjoying a day off and several others are at work goofing around on OSNews, we decided to ask you: what’s your “killer app?” What’s the one app you can’t live without? Sound off in the comments – one app only!
What’s Your “Killer App?”
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive • Web Developer • Father • Foodie • Music Snob • OS enthusiast
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the one I’m being paid to write at any given time… I may never end up using most the stuff I write, but it puts bread on the table
vim.
Great keyboard shortcuts for Forward and Backward in three differently sized steps.
And usually plays even corrupted or incomplete files.
just because someone else posted vim.
or the console.
Mozilla Seamonkey browser. I use it for both browsing and email.
screen is the most useful app, i can’t live without it.
I’m going to have to say telnet. I can reach my cube, talk to cisco routers, and debug some TCP applicaitons.. it’s quite handy to have around.
Also: ffdshow, media player classic, vitrualdub, irfanview, trillian and visual studio and Windows XP too btw, it has to be said.
On the gaming front, Live-For-Speed is the game I’ve played most hours ever.
All those apps are the ones occupying more than 95% of the time I spend with a computer…
Outstanding program , a godsend !
Why?
1. Its FREE
2. Laughably easy to use
2. Converts DivX,Xvid,and others to a new video_ts
folder ready to be burned to a dvd.
There are a lot more xvid and divx movie torrents available
on the internet than dvd ones and they download in
1/7 the time.
Edited 2007-11-23 19:02
Blacktree’s Quicksilver. I cannot use a Mac without it, and I don’t even use it’s full potential.
On alternative platforms, Windows Key + R is my other save, but it’s not as robust.
Edited 2007-11-23 19:00
Thanks for the info. Never heard of it before but will try it out tonight.
eM Client … not only I use it for e-mail and to keep my school schedule, but it also makes me earn some little cash
* Firefox
* Netbeans (5.5 was sweet, 6RC2 rocks)
I rather like this quote from the theoretical physicist Jim Hartle, in a talk he gave on quantum cosmology:
Cosmology is the Killer App for Everett Quantum Mechanics
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~everett/slides/hartle.pdf
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/misc/everett/Hartle%20-%20Co…
May be not the sort of kind of “Killer App” you were thinking of, but interesting eh?
Edited 2007-11-23 19:01
I’d have to say rTorrent, with the amount I download a day I couldn’t do without it.
Edited 2007-11-23 19:02
Quicksilver (www.blacktree.com)
install opensuse 10.2 and try to install some software and ZMD awakes…
it’ll murder your machine’s performance
so that’s a real killerapp.
no seriously, my vote goes to amarok, the best music experience around.
Oh, yum all that info:-)
* Opera on Windows – It’s text-to-speech capabilities are the best I’ve heard. It’s not uncommon for me to copy/paste a bunch of articles into a text file, a perl script converts that to HTML, then have Opera voice ‘read’ it at night while I sleep and convert that to an mp3 file for listening at work the next day. I don’t read very much stuff at my computer anymore
* Directory Opus – Best file manager I’ve seen.
* Adobe Audition
* Winorganizer – ‘Outliner’ app + PIM all rolled into one.
* 1by1 – Small media player that specializes in audiobooks.
* PowerDVD – I’d be interested to know if there’s another video player out there than lets you fast forward/rewind a video at 2x without changing the pitch of the audio. That’s pretty cool
* Maxthon – Use it at work where IE is required. Some features are better implemented than Firefox or Opera.
* And about a half dozen little utils I have written for myself.
VMware Server. Good enough and free.
/+1.
Looking forward for vmware 2.0! (Already in beta)
– Gilboa
Most of my friends us IM, it is IM that keep us in touch everyday.
Amarok!
There’s only two apps I use every day; Firefox and xterm.
You really, really can’t ask me to choose between them. On one hand I couldn’t live without my daily dose of the interwebs. On the other hand the terminal is where most of the action is; screen, vim, ssh, irssi, ncmpc, rtorrent, rsync, find, grep, sed, svn, gcc, diff, patch, etc, etc.
gcc
It replaces telnet, ftp and does encrypted tunneling for any application that doesn’t have it’s own encrypted protocol.
The real thing that seals it for me is remote forwarding. Remotely Possible, PCAnywhere, Windows Remote Desktop, VNC; none of them compare to simply opening an ssh and forwarding the X display to my local machine.
With a liveCD, it’s even turned a work issued notebook into a thin-client for use around my house when not working.
OperaMini – this app even can change your lifestyle.
Amarok for sure!
opera mini 4
CLI, but since standard with *nix… then, BASH.
My must have app depends on platform so…
On OS X Quicksilver is an absolute must for me. Always the very first app I install.
On Linux the choice is a little more difficult but i will have to go with OpenSSH.
Doom
95% of the time I’m using a computer, Opera is the only app running. Yes, I know this is cheating, because Opera is everything: browser, email program, RSS reader, IRC client, download manager with BitTorrent, and more. All this with a ~4mb download, and fast to use thanks to mouse gestures. It follows me to every operating system, and I use every feature.
I just can’t live without that two programs :S
The sound recording program.
XeTeX (and LuaTeX sometimes in the future) is my killer app…
TeXShell is my second killer app
(who needs LYX or complicated TeX editors when all you really need is TeX skillss….and…customizable buttons and colors, query and replace and syntax highlighting)
my killer app is firefox..
my os is linux ubuntu 7.10
i build ehcp, http://www.ehcp.net, a hosting control panel
see you
Here I go naming a small telnet client, when I skip over something really obvious.
If an operating system can count as a single ‘app,’ computing wouldn’t have gone much farther than it was in the 80s without Windows. Without it, we’d still have 20 or so different vendors holding monopolies over diverse, non-interoperable platforms, and Moore’s law would have become irrelevant with hardware manufacturers trying simply to create a console that could sell, rather than creating better and better hardware for a standardized platform that they could be sure would have customers. So I guess that’s still my ‘killer app.’
I’d have to say Evolution, as it is the only client that I can use at the office to connect to exchange.
2.firefox
3.gnome-term+ssh
Too many, really good opensource apps.
But K3B is my most used and treasured resource when it comes to apps.
goaltrak.com
no shit ! Can’t live with it, can’t live without it..
Other than that: WinRAR – not so much that I use it every-every-every day, but it is just really good and it is worth the money since you get a lifetime upgrade right, which I am exercising for ~10 years now… so much on commercial soft.
Freeware:
In a better world, Proxomitron would get more exposure, because I never access a web-page without it. It always works on Linux through wine, too. Forget your FF-extensions that never work for half a year after an FF upgrade, this works better for all browsers simutaneously – always.
Have you tried 7-zip? I’d have to add this one to my list of killer apps too!
God bless Linux, Firefox and vim.
Edited 2007-11-23 20:20
Choosing a browser is a bit dull – we all have one. My must-have app is KDE’s Kontact. I get mail, news, both basic notes and basket notes, journal, contacts, calendar and rss feeds all in one place. Since Kontact has a plug-in architecture, I could probably get even more if I tried.
Kontact seems very stable and for me it’s a darn site easier to use than Evolution, as well as nicer to look at. To me, this is desktop computing at its best and certainly beats anything I’ve so far tried on ‘doze. Kontact, Amarok, Kate and Digikam are the primary reason I use KDE over Gnome.
My second choice would be KDE’s Digikam, an excellent program that keeps things simple for its target audience, executes them very well and does exactly what it says on the tin.
In a year’s time, if progress is good, I’m hoping I’ll be able to say that KOffice 2 is my top app.
Although it’s not my #1 app, I have to agree that it’s still damn good.
Most of the time I just use the Kmail component but even that alone is great.
What I like most about it is that it’s a whole lot faster than thunderbird – something you will notice if you leave all the mails in your inbox since putting them into folders seems somehow unnatural (at least to me).
Redundancy is important. You could break *all* of the applications I use regularly and I could switch in alternatives and carry on working. Worst case, I could do almost all my necessary work from a small set of very basic console apps.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a very good idea to have your work structured so you have a single killer app. What do you do if it breaks?
All software suck so much that it’s impossible to raise any of them to a pedestal.
Edited 2007-11-23 20:29
A Desktop is my primary “Tool”… and so for _me_ GNOME is my Killer App i miss under all the other systems.
Firefox
StrokeIt, excellent lightweight implementation of mouse gestures functionality system-wide. For me it is THE way to interact with Windows (not the only way, of course, but the smartest one for many simple tasks).
Didn’t see anything as smart as that one since Mentor Graphics on Sparc Classic.
Unfortunately the project is abandoned and it won’t work on Windows Vista.
GNU Screen + ZSH. a killer setup for me.
Vim.
Photoshop.
My beloved browser and irc/mail client is what makes my heart go boom!
No particular order: k3b, amarok, konversation, kstars, kopete, digikam, kooka, krita, koffice, kaffeine
PuTTY (for Windows).
emerge
One app…
Amarok.
Best music player evar! The type of app where people see it, press the buttons for 5 min, and go ‘I want it’. Then I say, ‘you need linux.’
(Until some time in the 2.0 era anyway…)
anywhere, anytime…
Firefox WITH Web Developer Extension
VLC
ffmpeg
I can’t live without iqnotes on my Zaurus, but on my Desktops and laptops, I have to say Opera…been using it since version 2.0.
ezQuake!
http://ezquake.sourceforge.net/
Modern client for the best game ever
HyperCard: it got me interested in programming when I was ten. Too bad there aren’t any widespread languages like HyperTalk that are so easy a ten year-old, without any knowledge of mathematics besides arithmetic, could program without much difficulty.
Comes with Indiana by default and I can’t live without it.
SSH in general, but the extra goodies in OpenSSH makes life behind a single keyboard and hundreds of computers tolerable.
‘sudo’ + ‘kill’
There are a lot of programs I can’t live without, but they’re more or less replaceable. The only one for which I couldn’t find a suitable replacement is Microsoft Excel for Windows (even if I use it for 10% of its features).
I’m glad I can use the Windows version on the MacBook with vmware 🙂
Thank you!!! I can’t believe in nearly 200 posts this is the first one to name Excel! I program it on MacOS and Windows and use it for all sorts of things — work and non-work. It has quirks and needs some things added/fixed, but it is reason enough to justify buying a computer.
Emacs
vim.
though I use it on my Fedora and PCBSD boxes mostly… is NetBeans. Amazing piece of software.
I would have to say Opera, for I use it on all my machines and it’s great cross platform using it currently on a win xp box, Vector Linux, Debian etch and Debian Lenny boxes. So that would be my app of joyce use it every day.
I use LaTeX to typeset my math papers (and EMACS/AucTeX as a front end). Seems like nothing beats LaTeX in this respect.
Puri has at the moment not so much functionalitty, but already now I like it more than XBoard or EBord.
So, “Puri, Master of Chess” on Syllable is my choose.
Helpless without BASH and vim.
Love and use them everyday.
Google tracks all your searches in order to create a profile of you. If you use Firefox, use also TrackMeNot.
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~dhowe/trackmenot/
Better yet, make Tor and Privoxy your “killer apps”.
Thanks. Tor & Privoxy are great. I found them through EFF a year or so ago. I will try out the Firefox extension when I get home.
I use most of what’s already been mentioned – firefox, bash, vim…. under linux all day every day.
However, the one app that my life literally depends upon is MS Money. Say what you like about MS – I don’t care, this is a brilliant product for hardly any amount of money really. Its the one thing that will keep a windows partition on my hard drive, probably forever!
When used correctly, MS Money has crack like addiction, it is just unbelievably useful to keep track of finances, shares, bills and household expenditure. Nothing comes close. Use it every day without fail. Oh the weirdly very satisfying sensation of reconciling your current account.
It even passes the “wife” test with flying colors – she gets traumatised if she hasn’t kept her receipts and accounts up to date. Praise indeed.
Long may it be upgraded.
Edited 2007-11-23 23:19
Emacs, Emacs, Emacs!
If I can only choose one I’d say gedit. I use it for writing code and editing config files. With the right set of plugins it’s better than most IDEs since you get syntax highlighting, autocomplete, a class browser, and a python shell.
Always the first thing I install on any computer I’m using.
I do so many things in so many DEs/Operating Systems that I simply can’t pick just one.
In Windows I must have:
iTunes/Utorrent/VLC/Firefox/Pidgin. I always install Warpath as well (older space based strategy game – not overly complex, but fun. If I could have all those hours back…Runs perfectly in Wine as well)
KDE
Amarok/Ktorrent/VLC/Firefox/Kopete/Yakuake (pretty terminal that pops down whenever you hit F12). I really cannot live without APT, and I’ve tried…
Yakuake !
Definitely Yakuake! F12 anyone..?
F12 Everyone!
Especially version of it called: “Rational Application Developer”.
Very powerfull.
And very expensive.
foobar2000
And by a browser, I mean a non-IE one. Safari, Opera or FF, doesn’t matter to me.
I have two work-related software titles that I absolutely must have access to. Without these, the computer can’t pay for itself:
M-Control, the program that communicates with the data collection box.
Mudlog.exe, the program that creates and prints our drilling reports.
Servant Salamander (now Altap Salamander) – while I like Vista’s Explorer, I cannot live without two-panel file manager. I don’t like Total Commander, it’s too oldschool. AS is THE file manager.
MPD or EAC
But EAC can run easily in emulation, so MPD.
I can’t live without my Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.
Because that’s the one thing I’d want if I was on a virtual island, all alone.
A close second: VLC/Firefox/uTorrent
foobar2000.
main reason I can’t move anywhere other than windows.
Amarok FTW!
goaltrak.com
Because without it, I’m all alone…
really nice web broweer
VLC can paly just about any media format ever invented and is multiplatform.
Gmail.
Seriously.
It’s what I’ve always wanted:
A great, easy to use, almost the exact features I need, available anytime, anywhere I have an internet connection mail client.
don’t leave home without it
I absolutely can’t live without Adobe Illustrator!
My life (both business and personal) would cease to exist without Outlook + Exchange. IMO Exchange is *the* killer app for Windows Server.
Aside from that, Visual Studio on Windows is the other app that allows me to feed my family.
the best ide in the universe.
it isn’t something I use all the time, but is certainly something I couldn’t live without. Whenever I need to contact a friend on the fly and one of us doesn’t have a phone, we get on meebo for a quick and easy IM session. it’s so nice since people don’t have to download anything for those that aren’t computer savvy.
Emacs, of course…
I have earned all my living since I graduated from school by developing programs on Emacs. With its multiple program modes and customizability with e-lisp, I cannot survive a (working) day without emacs.
Geeky of course, but so is Vim and gcc …
Python comes a close second. I will be nowhere without this excellent, free, X-platform, open source language and interpreter.
Thank God for Linux, Emacs, Python and gcc.