Software I want (other people) to try
I find myself recommending software I’ve heard of but never tried with the desire to get other people to spend effort on making them work and letting me know if they’re worthwhile. I’m generally clear about that that’s what I’m doing, but still, it feels a little underhanded, so here’s an explicit list of (some) software that I haven’t gotten around to trying, would like to, and would appreciate comments about from people who’ve used them before:
- Cream, a layer on top of vim with normal-people-style keyboard shortcuts. Mostly I’m curious if this is a reasonable thing to recommend to newcomers to the UNIX world who are used to Windows/Mac editors.
- xpra, a more different way of running X applications across the network by making clever, perhaps too clever, use of compositing, and basically just compositing windows onto a remote screen and windows thereon. It seems to boast reconnection support and be able to guarantee much better security than real X forwarding can.
- Alternative git frontends (“porcelains”), specifically EasyGit, Yap, vng, zit (for single files).
- Canorus, a music score editor that looks like it might be very awesome. Compelling features include LilyPond integration and indications that it might actually have a reasonable UI.
- Colloquy, a Mac OS X IRC client. I don’t use OS X any more, so this is perhaps the closest to honestly wanting to know if it’s a good recommendation.
- fakeroot-ng, a reimplementation of fakeroot using ptrace instead of LD_PRELOAD, which but for speed addresses the limitations in fakeroot I mentioned previously.
- neercs, an allegedly awesomer version of the venerable GNU screen. It has some nice tricks and is hopefully more extensible. I also hear the really cool kids use tmux.
- most, a pager which is apparently even more than either more or less. Great job on the naming all around, guys…
All of these are, as far as I know, free software.
I’m sure I’ll think of more as time goes on (I already realized I forgot about the last couple within two minutes of writing this). Anyone have experience with any of these? Alternatively, what other potentially-nifty software have you heard of but haven’t gotten a chance to use?