GNU/Linux

People might ask, "Why bother? Microsoft Windows 95,98,2000,XP is such a great OS, and Microsoft Office is the greatest invention since sliced bread. And besides, all latest hardware gizmos work out of the box with Windows.".

All this is true, still I argue that for a programmer a better choice is GNU/Linux. Following are a few of the programs available on GNU/Linux I use, which are excellent quality, and have outstanding support. The drawback of Linux is that it still requires some tinkering to get some things to work.

OpenOffice.org

I am doing all the presentations for classes I teach using it, and it works well. I also use

• OOoLatexEquation for embedding Latex code within presentations.
• OOo Label Templates for printing labels from OpenOffice.org

Emacs

This is the ultimate text editor. Use this to write documents in Latex, web pages in HTML and computer programs in the language of your choice. In all that Emacs intelligently helps you along the way, while maintaining the same familiar feel. I use the following packages for emacs:

• For editing HTML and XML documents I use PSGML
• For editing Latex documents I use AUCTeX together with the following minor modes enabled:
  • reftex: allows you to add references and citations
  • tex-source-specials: enables two way navigation between emacs buffer and DVI viewer
  • latex-math: creates shortcuts for special math characters and greek leters
• For editing Matlab files I use matlab-mode

Latex

You are thinking about writing an article for a journal or a book. You want those to look best. You want to concentrate on content, and let the computer worry about the look of the document. Forget about Microsoft Word and start learning Latex. With Latex I use the following packages

• graphicx - for including images in your documents
• amssymb - for using fancy math symbols
• cite - orders citation numbers and uses citation ranges

xfig

Vectorial drawing program.

gcc

Better C/C++ compiler that most available out there.

Apache

The most widely used web server on the Internet.

PostgreSQL

Full featured database server.

Gimp

GNU Image Manipulation Program. Outstanding image editing software similar in features with Adobe Photoshop

Octave

GNU Octave is a high-level language intended for numerical computations mostly compatible with Matlab. I gave a talk about Octave at Eleventh Annual Valdosta State University Mathematics Technology Conference.