Software I Use
Below are some opinions and links to the homepages on some of the software that
I use for common jobs in my research work. If you know of any better software for
these tasks then please tell me about them!
Creating Diagrams
Vector Diagram Editors:
Open Office Draw -
I've had my reservations about Open Office (and its predecessor "Star Office")
in the past. However, the latest version included with RedHat 8.0 (and 9.0) answers
of all my previous qualms. The font rendering is now effectively perfect, and many
of the bugs and display issues have apparently all been solved, they've even
written and excellent on-line help system. All that remains is for the developers
to include more "Apply" buttons, especially to object position editor dialogs!
Also some kind of postscript importing would be beneficial.
Tips: - When exporting to encapsulated post-script, select all of
the objects first (Ctrl+A), and then in a save dialog check the "Selection"
option, to minimise the surrounding white space.
- To turn off the annoying capitalisation auto-correction (and all the other
nuisances such as URL recognition) uncheck the relevant options in
Tools->AutoCorrect->Options.
- When "faking" plots containing straight-lines connected by curves choose the
"Curve" tool rather than the "Freeform line" tool, select the starting point,
then a half-way point sufficiently off-axis so as to create the desired
curvature, and then select the end point and double-click. This should produce a
flawless curve connecting the two straight lines
- New true-type fonts can be added by running oopadmin, and selecting
"Fonts...".
Programming
Compilers:
Intel C++ Compiler - Free for non-commercial use without support, this
optimising compiler can make your C++ programs run up to ten times faster on
Intel computer systems.
Tips: - On Intel Pentium III systems use the -axK option for
processor specific optimisation.
IDE:
KDevelop - Great for writing KDE
applications, but with a bit of fiddling you can use it to write your own console
based apps in a very efficient manner.
Internet
Web Browser and Mail:
Mozilla
Tips:
- Tired of web pages opening new windows etc. without your consent? Then stop
them using the "Privacy and Security" options in Mozilla's preferences.
- When upgrading, wait until spellchecker for the Redhat rpms is available and then
get RedHat 8/9 Xft RPMS for mozilla, mail, chat, psm, nspr, and nss. Backup plugins
and dictionary (components/myspell), and rpm -Uvh mozilla*.
- To get Java working, load up a copy of mozilla as the root
user and visit this site.
Also ensure that the Java runtime environment is installed, you need the
Blackdown 1.4.1 version for RedHat 9.
- To install a spellchecker for mozilla mail visit
this site,
again as root.
Office Software
Word Processing:
LaTeX
Tips:- Want to know how many words are really in your tex document?
Then run my python script to find out! Its
not 100% foolproof, but its errors are generally less than 1%, whereas wc
is typically out by 50%!
Misc
Desktop:
KDE
Tips:
- To create your own "Create New" file templates put a copy in the
directory "/usr/share/templates/.source" with a KDE desktop link in the
preceding directory.
Distribution:
Redhat 9
Tips:
- Get an Adobe Acrobat reader RPM compiled for Redhat 9 from
Gurulabs.
Kernel Upgrade process:
- Get latest kernel from up2date
- Get latest Nvidia driver from here
- Get NTFS module for new kernel version from here
- Reboot computer and let X11 fail
- run "sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-xxxxx.run" (where xxxxx is nvidia driver version no.)
- run "rpm -Uvh kernel-ntfs-xxxx"
- run "vmware-config.pl" to sort out vmware
- reboot and check everything works OK