6 ms·

What desktop apps do you use?

5 points by danw 19y ago

danw 19y ago
With web apps increasingly taking over from desktop, which desktops apps do you still use? As a starter my mac os x dock has Firefox, Mail, Terminal, iCal, TextWrangler, Adium, NicePlayer & Democracy. Everything else has been slowly replaced by web apps. Which app will go online next?
davidw 19y ago
emacs, rxvt, firefox, openoffice covers most of it.
nostrademons 19y ago
Firefox, Thunderbird (occasionally), Winamp, Gaim, uTorrent, Winzip, Acrobat, Ghostview, VMWare, SSH. Netbeans when I need to do work stuff, and IE for testing browser compatibility. MSPaint for quick graphic edits, and Notepad++ for quick text edits. Occasionally Civ3 or SimCity 2000 when I feel like playing a game, and the DVD burning software that came with the machine. Nothing else.
twism 19y ago
itunes, eclipse, gtalk, paint.NET, NaviCat, WinSCP, Putty, Windows Task Manager.
larkin 19y ago
BTW, why do you want to know that? :)
- danw 19y ago
  To know which web apps need building next! If a lot of people are still using a desktop app when it can be made a web apps you've got to wonder why..
  - ktus 19y ago
    In that case, then how about a web version of emacs.
    - ryantmulligan 19y ago
      There already is one. It's called 9ne http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/ http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/
  - nostrademons 19y ago
    How about a web version of VMWare? Then I could run Firefox, inside of VMWare, inside of Firefox, inside of VMWare, inside of Firefox... Edit: Oh shit... http://wubuntu.weejewel.net/ http://wubuntu.weejewel.net/
abstractbill 19y ago
I use emacs, firefox, iterm and itunes. I sometimes think about getting rid of iterm, but never seem to be able to find an emacs terminal mode that does full ansi support perfectly.
entelarust 19y ago
safari, firefox, textmate, transmit, photoshop cs3, adium, transmission, netnewswire, itunes, syncrosvn
omouse 19y ago
firefox, opera, safari, emacs, sonata, mpd, ncmpc, openoffice, gimp, inkscape, mirage, frostwire, gftp
tx 19y ago
------ Work ------ Eclipse, Visual Studio, Photoshop, WordPad, FireFox ------ Fun ------- Picasa, Excel, Quicken, RAW Shooter Essentials, Bibble. The only "online application" I use is gmail :) So much for "everything is moving to the Web" hype.
- nostrademons 19y ago
  Or it could be that other people have moved to the web sooner than you have. ;-) Most of the planning and early design work was done over Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Groups, and Skype. (We mostly moved to AIM/phone/going to each others houses when we dropped from 5 founders to 2.) FictionAlley.org has a staff of close to 200, all managed through Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger. Even at work, I often find myself communicating over AIM with my cubemates. And I talk to my boss over AIM a lot more than in person, since he's on the other end of the building.
  - tx 19y ago
    No kidding. :) Is this thread about working or talking? Surely it's hard to collaborate with people using desktop applications without an internet connection. The point I was trying to make is that "death of desktop" is a myth. A new buzzword, invented to get more PR for whoever is NOT developing "desktop software". While harsh reality is that there are applications and there are web applications. And we all make our money using "desktop" software every day. Moreover, lately it become accepted (and even hot) not to pay for it (apache, mongrel, linux, eclipse, ruby interpreter, PHP, photoshop, firefox, internet explorer, even freakin BIOS). And proclaiming it "dead", while being 110% dependant on it, is at least superficial. And if you ask people why they build web apps, the answer will not be "because desktop is dead", but probably (if they are being honest) because regular software takes a lot more skill, more learning time, more development time and frankly it's just not as "sexy" these days. Sexy or not, it surely is not dead. We depend on "desktop" so much that people often pay for it, while "web software" is almost never considered valuable enough to get people to open their wallets for. To me that's pretty pathetic: not to be able to charge for what you've built, and becoming yet another semi-useful parasite sitting on AdSense wellfare.
brianmckenzie 19y ago
Firefox, TextMate, Terminal, OpenOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, iTunes, iChat, Pro Tools LE
myoung8 19y ago
Mail.app [1], iCal, AddressBook, Safari, FF, Skype, iTunes, iChat, iPhoto, Preview, Excel, Word, PPT, Photoshop [1] You probably just shat a brick, but I like mail on my desktop...
dfranke 19y ago
On Linux: Firefox, mutt, emacs, xchat, gaim, amarok, skype, gimp, LaTeX, Mathematica, VMWare. On 'doze: Firefox, Visual Studio, Quicken, OpenOffice. The only one of these that I'd like to replace with a web app is Quicken. Buxfer looks promising but it's not nearly there yet.
staunch 19y ago
gkrellm, gnome-terminal, firefox, gvim, gaim, xchat, thunderbird, xine, mplayer, inkscape, gimp. Linux with WindowMaker.
thisisnotmyname 19y ago
gvim, cygwin, firefox, open office, the gimp, visual studio, mysql, sql server express, itunes, aim
jim-in-austin 19y ago
firefox, filezilla, puTTY, notepad++, nvu, itunes, irfanview, truecrypt, csved, calc (not what you think), excel and... nethack!
- jim-in-austin 19y ago
  calc = http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc/ http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc/ csved = http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/index.html http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/index.html
mynameishere 19y ago
I don't think we're being honest here. I use 5-6 different media players alone. Most of you seem to be boning up on your nerd credentials, because I don't see too many mentions of Doom or Quake, or MSFT Office, or Notepad, or IM clients, or Winzip/winrar, etc. The most popular dev environment seems to be Emacs. This tells me that your favorite language is still in diapers. I develop 10x faster in Eclipse than I ever could in Emacs. (I used emacs for a year coding C--it's okay, but its whole 'culture' harkens back to 300 baud modems.) Some things that seem non-desktop, like Flash, really are in a sense--the connection to the browser and the web is very weak.
darose 19y ago
The ones I use the most are: firefox, gaim/pidgin, rdesktop, eclipse, konsole, thunderbird, konqueror (as file manager, not browser), kedit, audacious, squirrel sql

5 points by danw 19y ago

danw 19y ago

With web apps increasingly taking over from desktop, which desktops apps do you still use? As a starter my mac os x dock has Firefox, Mail, Terminal, iCal, TextWrangler, Adium, NicePlayer & Democracy. Everything else has been slowly replaced by web apps. Which app will go online next?

davidw 19y ago

emacs, rxvt, firefox, openoffice covers most of it.

nostrademons 19y ago

Firefox, Thunderbird (occasionally), Winamp, Gaim, uTorrent, Winzip, Acrobat, Ghostview, VMWare, SSH. Netbeans when I need to do work stuff, and IE for testing browser compatibility. MSPaint for quick graphic edits, and Notepad++ for quick text edits. Occasionally Civ3 or SimCity 2000 when I feel like playing a game, and the DVD burning software that came with the machine. Nothing else.

twism 19y ago

itunes, eclipse, gtalk, paint.NET, NaviCat, WinSCP, Putty, Windows Task Manager.

larkin 19y ago

BTW, why do you want to know that? :)

danw 19y ago
To know which web apps need building next! If a lot of people are still using a desktop app when it can be made a web apps you've got to wonder why..
- ktus 19y ago
  In that case, then how about a web version of emacs.
  - ryantmulligan 19y ago
    There already is one. It's called 9ne http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/ http://robrohan.com/projects/9ne/
- nostrademons 19y ago
  How about a web version of VMWare? Then I could run Firefox, inside of VMWare, inside of Firefox, inside of VMWare, inside of Firefox... Edit: Oh shit... http://wubuntu.weejewel.net/ http://wubuntu.weejewel.net/

abstractbill 19y ago

I use emacs, firefox, iterm and itunes. I sometimes think about getting rid of iterm, but never seem to be able to find an emacs terminal mode that does full ansi support perfectly.

entelarust 19y ago

safari, firefox, textmate, transmit, photoshop cs3, adium, transmission, netnewswire, itunes, syncrosvn

omouse 19y ago

firefox, opera, safari, emacs, sonata, mpd, ncmpc, openoffice, gimp, inkscape, mirage, frostwire, gftp

tx 19y ago

------ Work ------ Eclipse, Visual Studio, Photoshop, WordPad, FireFox ------ Fun ------- Picasa, Excel, Quicken, RAW Shooter Essentials, Bibble. The only "online application" I use is gmail :) So much for "everything is moving to the Web" hype.

nostrademons 19y ago
Or it could be that other people have moved to the web sooner than you have. ;-) Most of the planning and early design work was done over Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Groups, and Skype. (We mostly moved to AIM/phone/going to each others houses when we dropped from 5 founders to 2.) FictionAlley.org has a staff of close to 200, all managed through Yahoo Groups and Yahoo Messenger. Even at work, I often find myself communicating over AIM with my cubemates. And I talk to my boss over AIM a lot more than in person, since he's on the other end of the building.
- tx 19y ago
  No kidding. :) Is this thread about working or talking? Surely it's hard to collaborate with people using desktop applications without an internet connection. The point I was trying to make is that "death of desktop" is a myth. A new buzzword, invented to get more PR for whoever is NOT developing "desktop software". While harsh reality is that there are applications and there are web applications. And we all make our money using "desktop" software every day. Moreover, lately it become accepted (and even hot) not to pay for it (apache, mongrel, linux, eclipse, ruby interpreter, PHP, photoshop, firefox, internet explorer, even freakin BIOS). And proclaiming it "dead", while being 110% dependant on it, is at least superficial. And if you ask people why they build web apps, the answer will not be "because desktop is dead", but probably (if they are being honest) because regular software takes a lot more skill, more learning time, more development time and frankly it's just not as "sexy" these days. Sexy or not, it surely is not dead. We depend on "desktop" so much that people often pay for it, while "web software" is almost never considered valuable enough to get people to open their wallets for. To me that's pretty pathetic: not to be able to charge for what you've built, and becoming yet another semi-useful parasite sitting on AdSense wellfare.

brianmckenzie 19y ago

Firefox, TextMate, Terminal, OpenOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, iTunes, iChat, Pro Tools LE

myoung8 19y ago

Mail.app [1], iCal, AddressBook, Safari, FF, Skype, iTunes, iChat, iPhoto, Preview, Excel, Word, PPT, Photoshop [1] You probably just shat a brick, but I like mail on my desktop...

dfranke 19y ago

On Linux: Firefox, mutt, emacs, xchat, gaim, amarok, skype, gimp, LaTeX, Mathematica, VMWare. On 'doze: Firefox, Visual Studio, Quicken, OpenOffice. The only one of these that I'd like to replace with a web app is Quicken. Buxfer looks promising but it's not nearly there yet.

staunch 19y ago

gkrellm, gnome-terminal, firefox, gvim, gaim, xchat, thunderbird, xine, mplayer, inkscape, gimp. Linux with WindowMaker.

thisisnotmyname 19y ago

gvim, cygwin, firefox, open office, the gimp, visual studio, mysql, sql server express, itunes, aim

jim-in-austin 19y ago

firefox, filezilla, puTTY, notepad++, nvu, itunes, irfanview, truecrypt, csved, calc (not what you think), excel and... nethack!

jim-in-austin 19y ago
calc = http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc/ http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc/ csved = http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/index.html http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/index.html

mynameishere 19y ago

I don't think we're being honest here. I use 5-6 different media players alone. Most of you seem to be boning up on your nerd credentials, because I don't see too many mentions of Doom or Quake, or MSFT Office, or Notepad, or IM clients, or Winzip/winrar, etc. The most popular dev environment seems to be Emacs. This tells me that your favorite language is still in diapers. I develop 10x faster in Eclipse than I ever could in Emacs. (I used emacs for a year coding C--it's okay, but its whole 'culture' harkens back to 300 baud modems.) Some things that seem non-desktop, like Flash, really are in a sense--the connection to the browser and the web is very weak.

darose 19y ago

The ones I use the most are: firefox, gaim/pidgin, rdesktop, eclipse, konsole, thunderbird, konqueror (as file manager, not browser), kedit, audacious, squirrel sql