What Excites You?

[Erik Price]

Jon Hall wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am writing a talk on "What Excites Me" about Linux.  The object of this
> talk is to not only talk about the philosophical things that excites me, but
> honest to goodness "neat" programs.
> 
> For example, gnomemeeting excites *ME* since it will allow me to videoconference
> with people while I am on the road.  I know that some people like The Gimp,
> and I know that Paul Lussier likes GNUcash, but what other Open Source
> programs do you think are either stellar, close to stellar, or rapidly
> approaching stellar?

This might sound kind of strange, but my favorite Linux-run software is 
Apache HTTP server.  I'm not any kind of guru on it but I just think 
that the reach and capability of this software, as well as its 
consistent dominance in the web server market, is pretty exciting. 
(Even if it's not news to anyone.)

I'm also a big fan of the bash shell, I just really like it.  Not for 
shell scripting or anything, just it's nice to have a prompt with all of 
the features it offers.

Neither are really Linux-only though, so I'm not sure if this is really 
helpful to you.  But certainly Linux is helping spread their popularity? 
   Would I have Cygwin at work, or would my Mac at home have shipped 
with bash or Apache if Linux hadn't been popularizing them in the first 
place?  (I have no idea, though I do know that OS X didn't ship with 
bash, Python, or Ruby until relatively recently, and I bet that it was 
spurred by people wanting more of the tools that come standard with 
Linux distros.)



Erik