fotonix
what me worry
New Zealand
Using Unix since 1991, Linux Mint since Felicia.
Old school RDBMS / ETL scripting, automation and integration guy. Now a photographer by day.
Tutorials
| Title | Score |
|---|
Software reviews
| Software | Score |
|---|---|
| kdenlive "Open, click yes to 20 screens. Add clips - kapow: it crashes, closed and gone. Back to Windows DVD Maker...." |
1 |
| pitivi "Add clips, try to proceed - crash. Just closed and gone. As a result, also uninstalled." |
1 |
| sublime-text "Looks like a great editor, but $70 is way excessive. Any chance of a free 'lite' edition?" |
2 |
| kde-config-grub2 "The comments here saved it from 1-star. I made a quick shell script to start up the obscure command, named it 'grub2conf'. I had tried the process by hand, but failed. This brings in ease of use." |
4 |
| gpick "Just what I was looking for, great!" |
5 |
| graphmonkey "Nice and simple to use, but I only see one graph on my LM Cinnamon 64, will keep trying." |
3 |
| kalgebra "pretty good" |
4 |
| libreoffice-base "Not in the default LibreOffice. Only shows one DB type on opening - HSQLDB Embedded, and cnnpot connect to newly created file. Here is hoping for Office 5 with Mint 17.3. Very disappointing. [I have 20 years+ experience in high end DB, this product deserves a Lord Torvalds torrent]" |
1 |
| electrum "Do use the version from their website, this one is way behind and gives performance problems. But it is a very good wallet!!" |
4 |
| cgminer "Yikes - lots of man page but few clues on how to get going. 1st time miner so may be clueless." |
2 |
| rawstudio "I like the controls and being in control of where files land up. No 'library' that clunks around. Good performance even on my old machine. GUI and controls are intuitive to a photographer, unlike too many other such apps. Night photography images showed major rectangular areas - darktable did better, but it could just be me working in a hurry. Sadly, not worked on in 4 years+ and project page is now offline(2015). Dang, I liked it, now I must learn a new tool." |
4 |
| ufraw "Feature packed for RAW photo processing. Sadly I found the UI very confusing and hard to work with - my workflow demands repeatability. I ended up hunting a lot to find the same adjuster control twice. Tried a newer version some 14 months later, much improved, figuring out handling of multiple images was still not intuitive." |
4 |
| firefox "I've used FF since pre 1.0 but with pocket and 39.0 it has reached an unusable dangerous state. Sad to have to say goodbye." |
1 |
| guayadeque "Well organized interface, many features to find and explore." |
4 |
| juk "Small, packed with features and intuitive. Listed ALL tracks in one long list, not grouped - maybe a setting. Instant lyrics & artwork lookup." |
5 |
| gmusicbrowser "Very nice and capable. Clean interface with features below, but where you'd expect them." |
4 |
| umbrello "First impression is that this is packed with power features. Better than some paid UML-ware my one workplace used." |
4 |
| conky-all "No gui, but "man conky" in terminal should get most people on the right track to happiness." |
4 |
| picasa "One word: privacy." |
1 |
| gufw "Looks to have potential to contain some teen online behaviour." |
4 |
| phatch "I found the interface confusing and functionality limited or obscured from view. Also, why does it force FONTS onto my system?" |
2 |
| scribus "Full-strength DTP. Have made new converts of very experienced users of other DTP products." |
5 |
| inkscape "Loving this since many versions ago. Excellent! 27.2.2015 - no sign of newer 0.98 release of this in repos." |
5 |
| dropbox "Great if you need it, like sharinf photos and files across continents with distant friends. Of course, always keep "privacy" in mind with anything "cloud"..." |
4 |
| transmission "Great for those massive distro release ISO files." |
5 |
| hugin "One of only options for Linux (my 2 paid-for Windoze ones beat it by a hundred miles). Overcluttered interface, no simple workflow or obvious control over options. Last fight was 10 min and no result, PanoPro in Windows worked in 45 seconds. Hugin can do with some extreme UI streamlining, also its is slow-as heck." |
2 |
| photofilmstrip "Easy to use and tweak, has proved itself for several projects." |
5 |
| scratch "My two lil labrats are off to a running start with this great software." |
4 |
| tomboy "Completely useless for desktop notes. 5% of what I enjoyed in Windows." |
1 |
| darktable "This aims to be absolutely pro-level, mature, smooth, beautiful! Thank you developers! There are aspects of the GUI that are not quite intuitive, but I found a lot of help in the nearly 200 page PDF manual that is available. Image quality of the output is superb, making the learning curve and processing time(from RAW) worth it. NOTE: LM-13 Maya is stuck on v0.9.3 where LM-17 Qiana gets v1.4 which is a VAST improvement!" |
5 |
| showfoto "Looks great from a quick first glance. Time will tell if I use it a lot, repeatedly." |
4 |
| focuswriter "Simple and clean, helps get the job done. Have missed this simplicity since the first WordPerfect for DOS - oops, that dates me :)" |
5 |
| cairo-dock "Yes! Now this is a pro-looking dock!" |
5 |
| docky "Nice but not quite as intuitive as I was expecting." |
4 |
| rapid-photo-downloader "Completely key application for photography at any level. This brings the files from the camera to the computer and renames them - all custom configurable to my taste. Well designed and not over-complicated, works perfectly. Once the paths and renaming were set up, which was easy and flexible, it forms the first step in my new workflow. I then use rawstudio for developing, gimp for any tweaks, the std file manager for arranging folders, and kb3 for archiving. NOtE: the Ubuntu repository version is way old, set up the ppa to the original!" |
5 |
| eog "Fast, but so basic and Spartan that the Spartans left for other apps which feature features. Useful for a quick browse, not much more." |
4 |
| gthumb "Closest thing to Irfanview available in Linux. Devs, please, change JPG Comments to write into the file as GiMP and Irfanview do - not as a sidecar file. This fits 99.5% and deserves its 5 stars!" |
5 |
| bleachbit "very nice to keep your system clean and running optimally." |
5 |
| imagemagick "I have discovered only 0.005% of what this can do and I am already very impressed. It now underpins some scripts I wrote to do jobs like creating thumbnails or translate between formats. Works flawlessly." |
5 |
| fotoxx "Tried it for a bit. Its Ok, but did not fit my (rather specific) needs." |
2 |
| gparted "Simply the best!" |
5 |
| krusader "Knice, but I use Cinnamon, not KDE - and it looks odd using KDE apps with Knone, Kinnamon, etc. Then I found 'sunflower' and that to me is 5-star now." |
4 |
| nemo "The more I use it and discover details in there for the power user, the more I love it. Thank you." |
5 |
| wifite "I can now do an actual test on my home wifi!" |
5 |
| gnome-sudoku "Very enjoyable, thank you." |
5 |
| mypaint "I can see this being useful as I wean off of several Windows apps in my workflow. :)" |
5 |
| krita "I've read only good things about Krita, adding it to my toolbox." |
4 |
| gimp "Huge new learning curve after mastering PS of course. Gimp is a powerhouse and I have only begun to explore its labrynths and try to crack into its secret ways (eg Scripting to replace Actions). Many online tuts and videos are for deprecated versions and of little help. Updated Q3 2013, when shall we finally get v2.8 in Linux? Pretty please." |
5 |
| geany "My positive opinion crashed for Geany as it forces its own idea of indenting despite preference settings. Nice otherwise." |
2 |
| mint-flashplugin-11 "I get errors every update time. At wits end as I have tried to remove and reinstall with no luck (3 different machines)." |
1 |
| mint-flashplugin "Every update I get 2 failure messages. Still trying to avoid the Adobe flash though, so hoping for a fix to this." |
1 |
| calibre "Looks good. Concerning that no newer version is in the distro repository, but this old one is." |
4 |
| pdftk "Can be useful. I tried it to fill in a PDF form, but the file seems to be a mess." |
4 |
| pdfedit "Very so so compared to its Windows version. Hope this improves quickly. Not very useful at this point, I still copy the files to USB and work in Windows, then copy them back..." |
2 |
| xmountains "Interesting. Needed to start from commandline, not menu. Export to?" |
3 |
| fractgen "Basic but nice. Had to start it from command line, not menu." |
3 |
| qtcreator "I need to move on from Tk, and learn to develop for Linux properly. This is the recommended tool." |
4 |
| xaos "Great fun, controls are out of the way but fairly obvious - F1=Help, Q=Quit." |
5 |
| fracplanet "Well organized software, easy to use. Control over the number of polygons would be valuable to create more detailed planets." |
4 |
| fraqtive "Very nice, smooth and fast." |
5 |
| gnome-commander "My initial joy of finding this has faded. It has a 1980's look and kludgy functionality." |
3 |
| tuxcmd "Useful and UI fits modern usage." |
4 |
| lombard "Basic and not always as stable as it should be." |
4 |
| brasero "Click to start, Brasero says "No". Well then, uninstall, bye-bye." |
1 |
| k3b "Does what I want the way I want it." |
5 |
| xpad "Simple and effective for small, quick notes." |
4 |
| rhinote "Nice-ish, but I found xpad was a closer fit to my needs." |
3 |
| luckybackup "Backups should be this simple, and effective. Great GUI on top of tried, tested and trusted Unix utils." |
5 |
| ltris "Is there a place to turn OFF multiplayer?" |
3 |
| tint "Cool, compact, commandline. Refreshingly retro." |
5 |
| filelight "Awesome tool for KDE, where I use Gnome and use the equivalent there." |
5 |
| baobab "Just discovered this, while finding OverDisk for my legacy XP box. This is awesome!!" |
5 |
| lm-sensors "Basic "service" to feed data to apps that do the display work. My temps seem to report way above reality though (HP i7 laptop)." |
3 |
| samba "Comes with the standard install which is just perfect." |
5 |
| system-config-samba "Made the config easier than the already relatively easy, thank you." |
5 |
| gpicview "Packs a punch for its tiny size. I am impressed." |
5 |
| geeqie "Nice, quick, simple. Worth a look as it may work for you. Update [Mar 2013]: removed it as it got in my way." |
4 |
| gnome-activity-journal "Could e great, if I saw more than just blank screens (histogram shows X items - but no details available). LinuxMint Maya Cinnamon 64bit." |
2 |
| scite "One of the nicest editors around. The Win alternative, Notepad++ is based on Scite. For the perfect editor I would marry Scite and Geany (which can't handle multiple files as Scite does)." |
5 |
| posterazor "Easy to use and very useful." |
5 |
| bibletime "Very nice to see a good native Linux app in this space." |
5 |
| mirage "I tried it and found it slow and lumpy. It also seemed to affect an original file which turned out was still fine on the disk, but the UI made it look like the original was gone and had been overwritten. That was the last chance as I cannot afford that sort of heart-attack in my workflow, not for me." |
1 |
| wine "Must have to run Irfanview. It is a pain to set up "just right" though, but then that is the MS.Win legacy, confusion." |
3 |
| widelands "My kids figured out this game in a few minutes and are absolutely stuck there since then. "Better than minecraft" they say." |
5 |
| qalculate "Was recommended and I agree, its good." |
4 |
| speedcrunch "Very cool." |
5 |
| audacity "This is one of my favourite applications. More than enough for my simple needs." |
5 |
| keepassx "Indispensable. I love this application." |
5 |
| meld "Works nicely." |
5 |
| digikam "Growing to like this even over GiMP. Intuitive GUI (rare) and makes photo editing and management as fun as it can be." |
5 |
| kipi-plugins "I found the expro blending worked very nicely for me, thank you." |
5 |
| qtpfsgui "Strange name, seems to be the GUI glue over several bits of software? Does the job well and helped me move another major piece of photography workflow over to Linux." |
5 |
| pysolfc "110% addicted to hexaklon, the other 999.. so what." |
4 |
| mapivi "One of the rare applications that work with IPTC, EXIF and JPeG Comments. Interface is Tk, so very dated and clunky." |
3 |
| pyrenamer "File renaming done right. Thank you." |
4 |
| banshee "Don't like it for numerous reasons. Remove from default install please." |
1 |
| mintnanny "/etc/hosts approach is too global, need per-user white list black list etc." |
2 |
| pinta "100% rocks!!! Yay, I eventuallyfound it in Software Manager. Should be featured much higher and more visibly because it is a great application." |
5 |
| mtpaint "Trying a simple resize (failed) with one image was enough. Not mature enough for quick and easy usage. I didn't see Pinta in the Software Manager, it is 100x better." |
1 |
| f-spot "Tried it. Not up to the job. Maybe in a few versions..." |
1 |
| acroread "Adobe was a big factor in leaving Windoze. Don't contaminate your Linux with this." |
1 |
| stellarium "The absolute gold standard for stargazing software." |
5 |
| audacious "Just what I needed. Small, simple and functional." |
5 |
| wifi-radar "Exactly what I needed, works perfectly." |
5 |