I have always hated computer calculators because of their idiotic user interface with images of buttons to click. An analogy of that would be a writing program that required you to type by clicking a picture of a keyboard with mouse.
Calc is my favorite calculator. It is used from keyboard. What you have typed is always visible. It can also handle big numbers. Unlike the Windows default calculator, calc does not make mistakes in maths.
I often need a web site saved, so that I can refer to it later or read it on my laptop. Even if I had the patience to save 100+ pages by hand with a browser, the web site could not be browsed off line.
Httrack downloads a website with one command, saving images and files and making links work.
Below I have downloaded a web site with command "httrack http://www.site.com/directory". I am using my favorite web browser to look a the site:
Because it's not possible to have all programs in Finnish, I prefer to use all programs with English user interface. Also, I often disagree with the translations. However, I still need Finnish spell checking. With Microsoft Office, Finnish spell checking with English user interface requires manual, unsupported tweaking and two paid licenses. In the bad old days, you had to buy StarOffice to get spell checking for Linux.
Soikko is a Finnish spell checking program for OpenOffice. Tmispell makes it possible to use Soikko in almost all Linux programs.
When I want a program, I want it right away. For closed source Windows software, it means reading magazine articles, going to shop, opening boxes, handling cdroms, saving receipts, trying to find lost serial numbers and license documents... Even with Red Hat's default tool, Red Hat Package Manager RPM is notorious for dependency hell: this program requires loh4n21.so, which found in package weird-lib.rpm, requiring l32b.so... Up2date costs money and does not contain the RPMs I need such as those I have in this page.
Apt installs programs easily. It
Finds the program
Chooses the latest version
Downloads it
Finds everything else that is needed (dependencies)
Installs everything.
This is done with a single command. To install lynx, you would write: "apt-get install lynx". Apt can also keep a computer or a whole network of computers updated.
All the manuals from the boxed set are available free. But they are not included in the installation cdroms. If you need help with Red Hat, these manuals are the first place to look. Redhat Linux manuals as online html
Program was chosen for this page, because I consider it important, and
It is not part of Red Hat distribution
It is not available as a compiled package (RPM)
It is not available in an Automatic Packaging Tool (APT) repository
Goal of this page is to make installing those programs easy. I have not programmed the applications in this page, and not even packaged most of them.