The Best Linux Applications: Communications & The Web

Posted at 11:58am on Wednesday June 8th 2011

This is the third in our week-long series in which we're asking you to nominate your favourite Linux applications.

Once again, your comments to yesterday's post made for excellent reading. We didn't have such high hopes for Office and Productivity applications, but your insights have shown us that Linux has a wealth of such applications available outside of LibreOffice/OpenOffice - many of which have already made it on to some of our systems!

Today's category is Communications and the Web. A number of people have already made reference to web browsers and their plugins in the previous categories, along with a number of web applications that have become central parts of people's work flows. This seems to mirror the common trend of people doing more in their browsers, especially as web standards advance and browsers become quicker.

In today's comments, we want to hear about the programs that make using the web on Linux the best possible experience. Your favourite web applications, browsers and extensions, instant messaging, email and VoIP programs are all included - and, as always, feel free to give this a broad interpretation!

Over to you...

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Your comments

Simple list

djura-san (not verified) - June 8, 2011 @ 12:50pm

- ncftp/lftp for ftp jobs (gftp when i feel stressed out to work in terminal)
- dropbox for every thing that i need to share from one pc to another (excluding sensitive data)
- irssi for IRC (i recommend xchat for GUI users)
- Firefox/Opera/Uzbl for web browsing and web design testing (you need a few browsers to test web design). As for extensions, i use modified "hosts" file and i use adblocker in firefox. Other than that, it's pretty plain and simple
- Skype is used for IM (it's not so good but many people are using it in Europe so it's the best thing atm)
- wget for downloading
- newsbeutter for RSS/Atom feeds (im too lazy to open 30 sites with 50 news every day in browser)
- re-alpine is used for mail accounts

My phone

bobthebob1234 - June 8, 2011 @ 12:53pm

that is running andriod and I can make it into a wifi hotspot and play on the interwebs on my laptop in the middle of a field or in a car driving down the motorway :D

then its the usual, firefox (+web dev toolbar), thunderbird, etc

So many to choose from

dazfuller - June 8, 2011 @ 1:14pm

Chromium - I've mentioned it every other day so it would be criminal not to mention it in this category
Firefox - It's still a great browser
Firefox + Firebug - I'm starting to prefer the Chromium developer tools but this is, for now, still the king
Dropbox - Same reason as @A_Teenager
Filezilla - I'm a web developer so a good FTP application is essential
Gwibber - I still like it
XChat - An IRC essential

Firefox - browsing Yoono -

signalpillar (not verified) - June 8, 2011 @ 1:36pm

Firefox - browsing
Yoono - social networking (number 1)
Skype
Pidgin

communication isn't a dirty word

Thameslink (not verified) - June 8, 2011 @ 1:41pm

The main thing would be my android phone, Zchwaa!
Browsing; Firefox 4 just the last few weeks, Chromium before that and sometimes Links.
SFTP; Filezilla or GFTP.
Bittorrent; Transmission.
Email; As I said yesterday Claws Mail and Mutt.
I also use wget, write, talk and wall... What? wall is a communication tool.

N900

Bungle (not verified) - June 8, 2011 @ 1:56pm

Nokia N900 running Maemo community SSU is all I need for all communication needs.

Power to the Penguin.

Brevity response

Mike K. (not verified) - June 8, 2011 @ 2:14pm

Filezilla
Chromium
Firefox
Pidgin
Dropbox
Skype

Vim + VimIRC But really,

EspadaV8 (not verified) - June 8, 2011 @ 2:25pm

Vim + VimIRC

But really,

Amazon EC2 free/tiny + znc + bitlbee + irssi -> IRC, MSN, Gtalk, Twitter, Identi.ca

Chromium - still feels the

Tobi - June 8, 2011 @ 4:19pm

Chromium - still feels the fastest
Claws Mail - fast and all I need
Skype - proprietary and evil, but good luck convincing my freedom hating friends to setup a Mumble install
Dropbox - absolutely essential for me
Transmission on my NAS
wget
From time to time gFTP
Choqok for microblogging

Firefox for a web

Emacs Advocate (not verified) - June 8, 2011 @ 5:13pm

Firefox for a web browser
Emacs with Gnus and ERC for Mail and IRC

Mostly the usual

Rhakios - June 8, 2011 @ 7:07pm

Firefox
Thunderbird
KTorrent
The wonderful facilities of SSH
Sometimes Konqueror and gftp.

Communication is essential

Sultan_of_Swing - June 8, 2011 @ 9:35pm

Firefox with the following extensions: FlashBlock, FlashGot, Adblock Plus and BetterPrivacy. Konquerer is great when Firefox's Webkit rendering engine doesn't always work - KHTML somehow gets the job done.

KMail and Akregator RSS feed reader (incorporated with Kontact). Sylpheed email client on my netbook 'cus its fast and does the job nicely without any frills.

Finally, Ubuntu's Network Manager is dead handy for, er, managing network connections.

mutt

simon - June 8, 2011 @ 10:44pm

I have a soft spot for the email client mutt. It just makes you feel cool getting your email from the command line.

On the other side if the coin, Chrome wins for speed and power.

The basics

Anonymous Eudyptula (verified) (not verified) - June 9, 2011 @ 3:19am

Thunderbird with Conversation View extension (Nightly is v. stable)
Firefox (again, nightly is v. stable)
KDE's bluetooth stack - for sending stuff to and from the phone
KTorrent

I hope its chips

Not the Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - June 9, 2011 @ 10:27am

Firefox/Iceweasel with NoScript
SSH and GNU screen (honestly that is an essential pairing, packagers should mark screen as a recommend of ssh).
Filezilla.
Aria2
Thunderbird/Icedove
transmission-daemon

A selection

Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér (mjjzf) (not verified) - June 9, 2011 @ 1:23pm

* Firefox
* Claws Mail
* Heybuddy
* Filezilla
* Uget
* Umplayer for watching Youtube videos

N900 a 2nd

TechnoHippie (not verified) - June 9, 2011 @ 9:07pm

I agree N900, it is my go for trave and needs If I can have only one techno gadget that is it. 64 GB memory Firefox debian chroot and nit driod there is nothing that a little know how cant solve coms wise, I was big into skype but that may be a hard lesson as to why free as in beer is not good enough.

Gyache Improved (Yahoo chat client)

JHA (not verified) - June 12, 2011 @ 11:19pm

If you got a Yahoo account and using Yahoo messenger in Windows it works fine. But for Linux the only good option is Gyache Improved.
All features works, webcam, photo sharing etc..
I can recommend it.

Licq (for ICQ)

Henrik (not verified) - June 12, 2011 @ 11:33pm

Licq is great if you using ICQ.