Beta's recommended software

Here is a list of software I recommend. Most of them are free. For those commercial products, I've tried them out and like them.

The icons

	PalmOS-based PDA e.g., PDAs by Sony, Handspring, or Palm (Why use Windows CE when there's something better?)
	Linux (or other unix variants) Yes there's a mirror site at HKU CSIS
	MacOS X
	MacOS 9 (or older)
	Windows

The software list

Names link to the site of the software. Descriptions are mostly mine. Yes they are biased. License will be entered if known. Icons may link directly to download sites or mirror sites.

For unix geeks They'll make you feel at home even if you are not using unix.
Cygwin	unix environment for windows	GPL Cygwin
emacs	Extensible, real-time editor Mac users may find the Enhanced Carbon Emacs by Enrico Franconi useful. For those who want to build the software yourself, the page by Andrew Choi, a former teaching staff of HKU CS, would be helpful.	GPL
Fink	unix software for your Mac
GNU-Darwin	A collection of GNU tools for Darwin	GPL
Web browsers For those who use Internet Explorer without thinking, here are some very good choices. I don't really know why MacOS X come with IE but not Mozilla or Netscape. Anyway, Safari is good enough (enable its tab feature in Preferences) and I found no reason to use IE on a Mac. Mozilla is simple in design, quite efficient, and doesn't integrate with the operating system so much that you don't know whether you are configuring the browser or the OS. The tab facility is simply great. For Windows users, besides Mozilla and Netscape, Opera is also a very good choice --- it can report itself as netscape, IE, or some other browsers. Its mouse gesture support is nice too.
Mozilla	Why use IE when we have a better choice? The tab feature is very convenient.	Mozilla Public License
Netscape Navigator	Netscape Navigator uses mozilla as its rendering engine. "Netscape" used to be pronounced as "Mozilla" in the past indeed, but now things have changed......
Opera	A fast browser alternative. Support of mouse gesture is what distinguish it from other browsers.
Communications Windows communication programs are quite broken. That's why there are so many basic communication programs for windows in the list --- for other OSes most of these (e.g., ssh) have already been built into the OS software bundle.
VNC	VNC: Virtual Network Computing Accessing your computer (X, Windows, MacOS) anywhere! Even for PDAs! Amazing!	GPL
PuTTY	PuTTY telnet and ssh client for Windows	MIT
ncFTP	ncFTP Nice convenient software for ftp	Client: free Server: CAL
ssh	Secure shell client ssh client for windows from ssh.com	SSH noncommercial
ICQ	ICQ --- I seek you A very popular messaging software. There's also a web-based ICQ2Go, usable even if your computer do not have ICQ installed. Look for the "Download ICQ" icon in the main site. For PalmOS or Mac users, look for the "ICQ for Mac" and "ICQ for PalmOS" links. There's no Linux ICQ client from icq.com, but licq.org has written some ICQ-compatible clients.	LICQ: GPL Others: ICQ
Multimedia Apple has the long tradition of providing excellent support for multimedia production and playback, MacOS is an ideal platform for multimedia. The i* series of software (iTunes, iMovie, etc.) and Quicktime are nice software that comes with the OS. Microsoft countered that by designing something MS-specific, e.g., Audio Video Interleave (AVI) or Windows Media Video (WMV) which are similar to what Quicktime and MP3 provide, respecitively. So, unless you want to limit the cross-platform compatibility of your media data, my recommendation is that MS-specific technologies should be avoided.
Audacity	Audacity An excellent audio recorder and editor. Supports viewing of audio spectrum.	GPL
IrfanView	IrfanView A very fast media viewer and converter. Supports most graphic, audio and video formats.	Freeware
irfanex	Shell extension for IrfanView Allows access of some IrfanView functions from Windows Explorer	Freeware
CDex	CDex CD ripping, converting, MP3 encoding, etc.
gs, gv, gsview, ghostview	Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview Software for viewing PostScript and PDF files.
gnuplot	gnuplot A very useful program to plot a variety of types of graphs. A lot of information about the package can be found in http://www.gnuplot.info/.
Quicktime	Quicktime Player, streaming server and broadcaster to handle Quicktime, SMIL, and other media files.
RealOne	RealOne A media player and web browser. Plays RealMedia, HTML, SMIL and other media files. Look for "Free RealOne player".
VLC	VLC media player Open source cross-platform media player	GPL
acroread	Acrobat reader Reads PDF files.
Productivity
OpenOffice.org	OpenOffice.org The open source office suite designed to be compatible with MS Office.	GPL SISSL PDL
Chinese support Sometimes the Chinese support built into the OS may not be good enough.
HKSCS	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set Indispensible for display of Hong Kong Chinese characters for Windows. Mac users don't worry. MacOS X comes with HKSCS support builtin.
QCode	QCode input method CangJei is an input method that I keep forgetting and relearning after not using it for month or so before I finally bought QCode. It's much more easy to learn and remember than CangJei, and allows typing Hong Kong Chinese characters much easier. Now I'm using it for both my PDA and Windows.	Commercial
Software development For those who like or need to write programs......
Java	The Java Language I write C++. At the beginning, I didn't like Java; I thought it was just C++ with garbage collection. Java is not a nicely designed programming language. Objects are not first-class language entities. Multiple inheritance is forbidden and replaced by the stupid interface mechanism which is essentially the same as defining pure abstract classes. There are many reason not to like Java, but these issues become secondary as the collection of Java libraries grow. Now Java become one of the my first languages of choice when it comes to development, mainly because of its cross-platform compatibility.
PHP	PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor You'll find a trace of many langauges in PHP: shell scripts, AWK, Perl, C, C++, Java,...... I don't say it's a nicely designed language, but it's convenient for quick web development. Afterall, it's the P of the LAMP model of web database development.
Algorithms
Algorithm design manual	The Stony Brook Algorithm Repository Algorithms and implementations from "The algoritm design manual"	Homepage
Development libraries Reuse is an important programming activity. Here are a list of libraries you may find useful. I haven't tried every one of them, so please just tell me if you have any specific recommendations.
CGList	Directory of Computation Geometry Software	Homepage
GAMS	Guide to Available Mathematical Software	Homepage
LEDA	a Library of Efficient Data structures and Algorithms	Homepage
LAPACK	Linear Algebra PACKage	Homepage
BLAS	Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms	Homepage
FFTW	Fastest Fourier Transform in the West	Homepage
IT++	IT++ A C++ library of mathematical, signal processing, speech processing, and communications classes and functions	Homepage
And of course... ... here are some software I wrote
handyScripts 1.0	Little handy scripts I've developed a number of little scripts that could be good to be placed in your local/bin . You can find description of the distributed scripts in the README file. They are open source under GPL. You can download the package handyScripts-1.0.tar.gz and install it in /usr/local/bin using the standard method: ./configure make make install If you want to install the scripts in, say, ~/local/bin , the commands to use are ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local make make install Since they were developed mainly for my own use, some of the external programs needed in the scripts (e.g., psbook) may not be available in your environment. Yet, comments, suggestions and bug reports are welcome. Just email me at clyip at cs dot hku dot hk about that. Thanks.