The following software is not in any priority order. But games are at the end.

Boot Magic

I currently have a triple boot system at work: An MSDOS partition, Win2K partition, and my Red Hat 7.2 partition. Boot magic when Red Hat is selected, boots cleanly to Grub (The linux boot manager), which then boots Red Hat. You should do it this way because you will want to run different kernel builds, and grub is a better solution than Boot Magic (my opinion only). Awesome product bundle is Boot Magic with Partition magic. My Win2K system had an error during a delayed write which trashed all Linux partitions. I was able to boot to MSDOS, run the DOS version of partition magic, restore the partition information and reboot. Way Cool!

Red Hat Linux 7.2

The KDE2 interface is awesome. Everyone I show it to, says it can be used by less experienced people (Windows home users is the reference). I don’t believe it is there yet, not because of KDE, but the administrative duties still require some knowledge, and we need the existing tools to be better integrated.
I wish all of the Open Source projects being worked on, which are duplicate efforts, could pool their programming efforts in order to move forward faster.
An example of this is KWord, AbiWord, and Star Office Word. AbiWord and KWord currently export RTF (rich text format which is what MSWord uses), but those packages can’t read (at least I couldn’t find how they could) the same rtf files into their programs. If all of them were working on an Office suite together, it would have blown by MSOffice long ago.

XEmacs

A highly configurable text processor. The X in front of its name desgnates that it runs under the X window interface. Very nice, I haven’t stressed it too much (just simple editing plus editing of C code and shell scripts). This is available in Red Hat 7.2 (you have to select it from the packages list). There is a windows version even for NT.

DOSEmu

This is an extremely complete package (almost scary if it wasn’t so much fun). They emulate just about everything: VGA graphics modes (with a user resizeable screen WOW), a full DPMI implementation, Pass through to call linux system commands, TSRs run, etc...
The biggest thing which may go unnoticed, is their LRedir command which allows a linux directory to be put up as if it were a DOS directory.
Well I found that the documentation wasn’t up to date, here is a tidbit. As long as you have the MSDOS operating systems files (msdos.sys io.sys, command.com) all in one linux directory under /var/lib/dosemu, let’s call it drivec (this can be a symlink if you like) but it can be in the standard linux filesystem (ext2). This is way cool, you can boot dosemu without having any Fat12, Fat16 of vfat partition on your disk(s). In other words you can have all ext2 partitions on your system, and still boot and run dosemu. I didn’t find anything which stated, this, but what it does is eases your administration of the dos files in a production environment.

GCC

This is the standard free, GNU C compiler. Very complete. Right now they are readying a release which makes the compiled code run faster. This is, in a way, in response to the Intel C compiler which is supposed to be blindingly fast. Can you imagine what these compilers will do to speed up Linux even more? Excellent!

Visual Basic 6.0

Still has some bugs and quirks, but you can’t beat the ease with which you can build complicated applications. Now, its not C and you can’t do in VB what you can in C, but you can get alot of the work done in VB.

One caveat is the bloating effect with each VB release. A simple “Hello World” program will create an install set of 2 megs in size! This is because of all the DLLs that need to be in the package. Microsoft should come up with a way to ship the VB DLLs to the customer with the OS and that way the distributions will be smaller.

ASDK for the PalmOS Platform

I was asked to program the Palm OS prototype with, of course, as little expense as possible. I decided to look into the free Palm programming tools. I wrote the prototype in straight C using this software. Everything  worked fine. One item to note is the online resources for Palm programming are sketchy and incomplete. The “Hello World” programs cause my Palm to reset when the application was selected from the menu again. Email me about my solution to that.  I will be setting up a Palm page soon. I look forward to posting my WABA (Limited JVM on Palm) stories also.

Netobjects Fusion

I haven’t seen anything slicker than this program! As of 1/23/01 they were offering it for a mere $99. That is truly a STEAL. Go buy it. Even if you don’t know how to program, I believe if you step through their tutorials and book you’ll be able to create a site from nothing.

Nero by Ahead Software

I had been using Easy CD Creator Deluxe, went to upgrade to Platinum and it wouldn’t run. Their technical support gave me a list of ten things to do like updating the DirectX components, flashing my CD ROM drive,  updated video drivers, etc... I gave up downloaded the shareware of Nero, it ran, burned etc... Suffice it to say I paid for their product through their web site. Nero has been running successfully ever since.

Winzip

A standard must have.

Netscape 4.7 and now Netscape 6.2

If people want me to answer their browser questions, then they must run version 4.7 of this browser. I am not sure why AOL made them take three steps backwards when they create 6.0 of the Netscape browser, but all I  hear on the streets is that it locks up all the time. The multiple email accounts would’ve been nice to have.

Diskeeper

Best defrag for Win NT.

Diskcopy

Excellent utility which allows you to copy a hard disk bit for bit (so the new hard disk boots exactly like the old one), while allowing you to resize the partitions into the new drive’s size. For example: You have a  10 Gig drive with three 3 Gig partitions. You just bought a 30 gig drive and want the drive to essentially have the same space. Tell Diskcopy to resize equally and you will end up with three partions on the new drive of 10G for each partition. Way Cool.

Partition Magic

Best repartition tool I have used. How do you think I got those partitions setup to begin with?

Starcraft

The biggest time sucking vaccum of a game I have ever played. If you want to play a game for SIX HOURS but it feels like a couple of hours have passed, then this game is for you. If you are starting up a company,  however, do not buy this game!  If you see me on the Battlenet board I am Widowmaker1

Battlezone I

Best 3-D first person tank game on the planet. I haven’t had time to get number two of the game, but it probably is just as good. A must have.

Half-Life

Best first person shooting game I have used so far.Will become a classic mainstay in any game chest.

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