#3 Deluge

IT'S TIME for the third installment of My favorite Linux applications. To day it is all about one Bittorent program Deluge. As keeping with the order previously assigned I will give a history of th product and then proceed to describe some of it various components.

The very first version of deluge was released to the public on September 25, 2006. It was originally intended to be called G-torrent and was released under that name but was quickly changed to avoid the confusion that it would be touted as a gnome only program. For the 0.5 on March 18, 2007 release there was a major rewriting of the source code for Deluge as many of the features were consolidated together. Version 0.5.8 is the latest release and has many improvements from previous versions including an internal anonymizing browser.

The plugins included are:

• Blocklist Importer
• Desired Ratio
• Extrastats
• Locations
• Network Activity Graph
• Network Health Monitor
• RSS Broadcatcher
• Torrent Creator
• Torrent Notification
• Torrent Search

I have been using deluge for the past few months and have a had very few problems that weren't my creation. And if you have any problems the forums are very helpful. Deluge is also available for Windows through an official port and mac through Macports.

The Deluge site is http://deluge-torrent.org/

I hope you enjoy Using deluge as I have it is a very good application and has plenty of potential for the future.

Be sure to stay tuned for the next installment in the Linux series on Smplayer and base application Mplayer.

To you my friends I bid you adieu.

#2 Compiz-Fusion

Here is my second installment of my top Linux apps to day it is about Compiz-Fusion.

Compiz-Fusion is the current incarnation of Compiz, which was released as free software by Novell for the SUSE distribution of LINUX in January 2006, and Beryl which forked from Compiz in September 2006. The two projects, Compiz and Beryl, merged in March of 2007 to become Compiz-Fusion.

With the merger Beryl production has been halted in favor of work on Compiz-Fusion, while Compiz has been maintained as the backend basis for Compiz-Fusion. Beryl development has been infused in to developing the plugins and functions on the visible level. With the merger Beryl has brought the availability of Emerald to the Compiz world.

The main function of the Compiz-Fusion is a compositing window manager plugin layer for the Compiz core. It has the fancy capability's known to Beryl with the stability that was considered to be Compizes major draw over Beryl.

Some of the many plugins include:

• Animation
• Color filter
• Expo
• Enhanced Zoom Desktop
• JPEG
• Negative
• Opacify
• Put
• Resize info
• Ring Switcher
• Shift Switcher
• Scale Addons
• Snapping Windows
• Text
• Window Previews
• Viewport Switcher
• Desktop Wall
• Window Rules
• Workarounds
• ADD Helper
• Benchmark
• Crash handler
• Cube Caps
• Cube Reflection
• Extra WM Actions
• Fade to Desktop
• Firepaint
• Cube Gears
• Group and Tab Windows
• Motion blur
• Reflection
• Scale Window Title Filter
• Show desktop
• Splash
• Trailfocus
• Widget Layer

With many others available and in development.

Along with Compiz-Fusion there is Emerald, a window decorator. Emerald allows for the Extreme customizing of the title bar.

Compiz-Fusion and its predecessors have contributed very greatly to the furthering of the Linux desktop movement into the main stream society, prompting other desktop operating system to develop similar features.

I hope you have enjoyed learning about Compiz as much as I have, and I hope you stay tuned for the rest of the article about the other applications, and to you my friends I bid you adieu.

What linux has that windows doesn't.

1. It is free. (unless you count pirated copies)
2. It is optimized to run better on 64bit platforms.
3. It promotes sharing. (unless you consider proliferating viruses sharing)
4. It has more features. (unless you count viruses as features)
5. Up to date full fledged releases. (again unless you count viruses)