Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 02:08:20 -0500 From: parv <parv_@yahoo.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: FreeBSD-ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Opinion requested: contents of "instant workstation" port Message-ID: <20011221020820.A12567@moo.holy.cow> In-Reply-To: <20011221160334.B11728@monorchid.lemis.com>; from grog@FreeBSD.org on Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 04:03:34PM %2B1030 References: <20011221160334.B11728@monorchid.lemis.com>
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in message <20011221160334.B11728@monorchid.lemis.com>, wrote Greg Lehey thusly... > > Some months ago I added an "instant workstation" metaport, intended to > be installed by people who had bought my book. ... > I'd like some opinions on things to remove or > add to the list. > > Greg > > Instant workstation > ___________________ (rearranged the shortened list based on function) ** cd burning ** > o cdrecord is a utility to burn CD-Rs. > o mkisofs is a program to create CD-R images. the closest & lightest thing to cdrecord is cdrtools. it includes "cdrecord, mkisofs, and several other programs". ** editors, text converters, printing ** > o dos2unix is a small utility for converting Microsoft text formats to UNIX > format. It does not convert formats such as Microsoft Word and RTF. i don't know the language of dos2unix so can't directly comment. i suppose a small awk, sed or perl script would do the same thing too. for converting ms word documents, i like antiword. be aware that there is another utility which sometimes eats up last few lines. > o emacs21 is the GNU Emacs editor recommended in this book. no (g)vim? > o ispell is a spell check program. how about adding/replacing ispell w/ aspell? > o ghostscript is a PostScript interpreter. It can be used to display > PostScript on an X display, or to print it out on a non-PostScript printer. and enscript for ps/pjl printers. it's really wonderful besides being light. don't forget to include a word in the book to setup printcap to take care of "ladder" effect. dang thing always bites me after setting up a "workstation". > o gv is a utility which works with ghostscript to display > PostScript on an X ... i had more success w/ ghostscript for some reason. but i remember vaguely gv being easier to use. ** mail, web, et cetera ** > o fetchmail is a program for fetching mail from POP mailboxes. will there be any word about using ssh tunnel to get mail (from servers that run sshd)? some people also like getmail being it "smaller/lighter". (i use fetchmail.) > o netscape47-communicator is a web browser. i have found linux-netscape47-navigator versions to be more stable than native ones. and for irc, xchat. ** audio+video ** > o xamp is a graphical MPEG player. > o xmms is an X-based multimedia player. why not just stick w/ xmms as it plays mp3 files, besides wav, just fine. that way there will be less bloat... unless qt1 is used by another package too... xmms locks my dell i5000e when playing cd, causing hard reboot. i use workman instead. > o The gimp is designed to provide an intuitive graphical interface > to a variety of image editing operations. > > o xv is a program to display images, in particular jpeg and gif. and may be tgif for vector drawings... ** windowmanager, environment ** > o kde is the desktop environment recommended in this book. well just make sure that it "works out of the box". i mean if somebody has problem compiling the damn thing, and afterwords running, "instant workstation" won't be so instant. xfce is a safe replacement. (i use fvwm2) ** miscellaneous ** > o xtset is a utility to set the title of an xterm window. It > is used by the .bashrc file installed with the package. to me it seems frivolous. is it really necessary? how about adding xlockmore & xkeycaps? -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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