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Everything on Ubuntu is my favorite, including snaps. I don’t have any issues with them. The Unity desktop was nice too, until things went downhill with the Amazon integration. In this article, I am going to discuss my three favourite application software on Linux. I use these applications daily, and I would say there are no easy alternatives available on other operating systems.
gThumb: An Image Viewer With a Sleek UI
gThumb has always been my first choice as an image viewer on any Linux desktop. Let it be Ubuntu, Debian, or Mint, gThumb is the ultimate choice for me to organise my photos. The user interface is clean and intuitive. It helps me to focus on things that I need to do without any bloat.
Gnome developers maintain gThumb and it is available free of cost for most of the distributions. It is easy to install gThumb on Ubuntu and related .deb-based distributions like Linux Mint.
In a terminal, enter:
sudo apt install gthumb
And voila, there you are.
Here is what gThumbs looks like on my computer. I drew that drawing myself on an iPad back in 2012.
You can see I divided the image into three blocks. The first block helps me to make changes in an image file. For instance, I can change the aspect ratio and size of an image by choosing the options in the format category available at the end of the block.
I can add filters and adjust colors using options available in the color category. It is as simple as two clicks as shown in the following image.
Block two helps me to rotate and zoom the images. In block three, you can see the aspect ratio, size, and zoom level all in one place. All these simple tasks are a bit difficult in other image manipulation software like GIMP which are targeted toward professional photographers.
gThumb also helps me to convert image formats including the modern ones like WebP and AVIF. It has a really nice understanding of compression levels while converting the images. I am very happy with all of these features.
Now let us hop to the next application.
The RedNotebook
Here comes The RedNotebook, an excellent offline diary! This application software is an integral part of my daily digital life. It has helped me to achieve goals, track, and change my habits. RedNotebook is very dear to me, and I am really grateful to the developer for keeping it free of cost. Jendrik Seipp from Sweden develops the software in Python. He has made it available for all the operating systems in the world. On Ubuntu, RedNotebook is as simple to use as using a text editor. The text editors just do not have the gut to work as a journal though.
You can find it in the Ubuntu Software catalogue or as always choose the geeky way to install it.
In a terminal, run:
sudo apt install rednotebook
Once installed, the developer will hook you to clean aesthetics of the user interface as shown below.
RedNotebook supports markdown but it is completely okay if I do not choose to write in markdown. The software focuses on journaling and gives priority to formatting the text. Again in markdown only. A user can export their journals in HTML and then open that HTML in the browser to print to a PDF file. This works perfectly for me. I never exported to Latex and I really do not want to at this time. One of my professors asked me to write the undergraduate thesis in Latex and I almost gave up on the thesis altogether.
Here is the export screen and you can see the developer kept the process simple. It cannot be simpler than this.
Besides RedNotebook, I only use my website for drafting, but in the last two years, my drafts have been sitting on a server to lay some eggs. I might publish all the drafts at once after publishing this article in FCM.
Now, my dear reader, I want to share the last software that helps me daily while using Ubuntu.
Htop
I would say without Htop I would have never been able to overcome certain Linux issues. Htop is one of the best process-viewers available for Linux users. Most of the time, only system admins use it, but if a normal computer user like me puts some efforts working with the Htop, then the sky is the limit for the possibilities and swiftness of finishing a task. You can truly finish a task using Htop.
Hisham Muhammad developed Htop using the C language. He also maintained it for fifteen years. Htop is the most prominent application in Linux systems. I am currently using v3.2.2 on Ubuntu 23.04.
It is simple to install Htop on Ubuntu. In a terminal, enter:
sudo apt install htop
As seen in the image (taken from the Htop website) this system monitor gives me a clear insight into all the processes running at once. You can see how many tasks are running, how much memory is used, and which applications are consuming more or less resources.
I do not need to touch the mouse while working with Htop. It’s all set up with function keys and a few custom bindings of my own.
Conclusion
If you have not used any of these software, I would implore you to try them today. If you are a GIMP user, but you only resize the images or change the formats, then give gThumb a try. I would say you won’t regret it.
For journaling, I would recommend trying RedNotebook once at least. You can create notes and to-do lists for work, and then export them the way you want.
I’ll return next month together with a new and amazing and more technical article. Until then take care of yourself and everybody around you.