[ubuntu-in] What software do you like -

ramnarayan.k at gmail.com ramnarayan.k at gmail.com
Sun Feb 22 08:45:41 GMT 2009


Hi

For sometime have been meaning to write about some software that we use
and really like and sharing it with others. There was a discussion on
the Ubuntu forum (global) but thats many pages long but felt we could do
with something similar sharing here.

So here's my first contribution

CATALOGING SOFTWARE: (FOR INDEXING / ARCHIVING)

Had searched for a long time for a piece of software that would index my
various Hard Disks, CD's DVD's etc for a few reasons:

1. to make it easy to track down elusive files without having to insert
/ attach each individual disk / media.
2. as a kind of time line snapshot.
3. To share information of commonly accessible disks
4. As a lightweight backup - atleast we know what we lost ;-)
5. To help sort , find duplicates and manage
6. Helps in remote management - esp to help people find stuff they don't
know they have on their computer.

So the search too me to many different software gwhere, gtktalog and *cdcat*

for me gtktalog did not work - something wrong with the graphics
ghwere worked but the archive files it made were very big and a big
problem was one cannot add to an existing catalog or archive -

*cdcat* is what i am using now

*cdcat* can be installed through synaptic - its available in the
universe repository of Ubuntu.

cdcat - it needs to be started up from command line but once it starts
up it works really well - the files it produces are in .hcf format , one
can export and well as import ( a feature lacking in gwhere) The archive
file size it produces are much smaller than gwhere's.

The beauty of cdcat is its fairly simple interface - very quick to index
as well as in searching. Once you make a Catalog you can keep adding to
it or rescanning the same media. You can edit comments for each category
/ media  (node as they call it)

Its got a nice search function - after a few uses one gets used to it
and it makes it easy to find stuff. It automatically shows up hidden
folders (like when you scan your /home/user folder it contains a lot of
hidden stuff including .Trash, so it makes you know what you have  )

gwhere does not allow you to search for iso files - which may not be a
big thing but is a drawback.

cdcat allows you to search a location for saved catalogs and asks you
where to store a saved catalog - this is good because you can keep your
archives in a obvious place and make it part of regular back ups.

It allows you to maintain a lending library of sorts, so you can keep
track of what you have lent someone.

A few drawbacks of cdcat are - it does not get added to you applications
 menu - you have to make a "launcher" or run it from a terminal. It
doesn't allow you to set a default file path - so you have to manually
navigate to the location where the catalog files are stored (or are to
be saved)

All in all cdcat is part of my essential ubuntu package.

ram





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