update 2004-DEC-13

Comments and suggestions for revision are most welcome and should be e-mailed to sysadmin@cs.uleth.ca

For information about compilers on the Sun systems, check the compiler info file instead.

The following list contains the software name, brief description of the software, and special instructions for setting it up [SETUP], and where additional documents can be found [DOC].

Often you do not need to change your PATH variable as most software is located in /usr/local/bin or has a hook there.

A fair amount of software has manual entries describing it.
Man entries are generally not listed under DOC. When the manual is not in a directory on your MANPATH, cd there and use command:

nroff -t -man <filename> | more

The following Korn shell function which may be in your .kshrc already is handy:

function manfile {
nroff -t -man $* | more
}  # preview man page before installation

Sometimes you can also get hints by giving stupid options like -qwerty to commands.

Sun Workstation Software

WWW related stuff

netscape

• browser
• /usr/local/bin/Netscape: Communicator
• /usr/local/netscape/netscapev3: Old version of browser
• All versions are US (stronger) encryption versions suitable for accessing higher security sites.

slirp

• use modem/terminal connection as a PPP link
• [DOC] man slirp. Also see /usr/local/doc/slirp
• NOTE: Be sure to use "slirp -P" or put "-P" in your ".sliprc" file. Check http://blitzen.canberra.edu.au/slirp/ about what to do on the home computer side of the connection.

acroread

• displays pdf files or converts them to ps files
• [DOC] acroread -i

enscript

• converts text files to PostScript files

rvplayer

• Real audio and video player
• [SETUP] run: rvplayer -s for instructions on how to set up netscape to use rvplayer

raplayer

• Real audio player - Obsolete. Use rvplayer instead.

latex2html

• convert latex to html
• cd /usr/local/latex2html
• [DOC] Consult local expert at wilsonn@cs.uleth.ca

tth

• TeX to html without using Gifs like latex to html does
• [DOC] See /usr/local/tth, and point your WWW brouser at source.html

workman

• CD player
• cd /usr/local/workman

wget

• get page from server (bypasses netscape, for example)
• [DOC] /usr/local/info/wget*

audiotools

audiotool

• on display menu

xplay

• for .wav files

rvplayer

• see above

File Transfer

zmodem

• file transfer
• [DOC] see manual on sz and rz

kermit

• file transfer
• [DOC] /usr/local/info/software.doc/kermit.doc

rsync

• keep files or directories across Unix machines in "sync" via rsh
• Need to install on your home machine also. See man entry for ftp address, or grab /pub/src/rsync-*.gz

HTMLDOC

• Check /usr/local/html

Spreadsheets

sc

• spread sheet

nexs

• X based spread sheet
• permission is required to use this software if you are not CS/Math faculty or not a marker as we only have a very limited number of licenses (2). mail sysadmin@cs.uleth.ca
• [DOC] nexs -html
• cd /usr/local/NExS/doc

Imaging

xv

• view images. Two versions exist on the system: version 3.00a and version 3.10a. Invocation by "xv" brings up the most recent version. The older version can be brought up by "xv3.00a" and will eventually disappear from the system.
• [DOC] see man and files in /net/imra/export/pub/docs/faq/xv, and also try: xv -i

ghostview

• preview postscript files. Allows for selective printing.
• RECOMMEND: to avoid color cube error messages start this as ghostview -mono

mpeg_play

• view MPEGs
• NOTE: For encoder see /usr/local/mpeg_encode

pbm

• convert between different formats
• old - should be replaced with netpbm
• cd /usr/local/pbm

Graphics

daVinci

• cd /usr/local/daVinci (equivalent cd /usr/local/davinci)

povray

• cd /usr/local/povray

geomview

• cd /usr/local/geomview

graphed

• cd /usr/local/graphed

vd

• cd /usr/local/vd

Typesetting

tex, latex

• TeX, The definitive mathematics typesetting package
• [SETUP] /usr/local/texmf/bin must be on your PATH.
• To specify directories where your macros could be: export TEXINPUTS=.:$HOME/tex:
• MUSIC: Formats for typestting musical scores are available.
  • To use the MusicTeX format, invoke TeX as: tex \&musictex score_to_typeset.tex
  • To use the bagpipe format, invoke TeX as tex \&bagpipe score_to_typeset.tex
  • Documentation for these formats, and two sample scores, can be found in /usr/local/music

RELATED: texview, latexview

• these scripts tex or latex your file, "dvips" it, and then preview it with ghostview. You can print from within ghostview.

dvi2tty

• view dvi files on ascii terminal

xdvi

• view dvi files on X terminal (or console)

Utilities

agrep

• member of grep family, but does fuzzy searches

elm

• mail user agent (i.e. mail reader, in case you're jargon impaired)
• NOTE: There are about a dozen related utilities

mutt

• mail user agent like elm but better. Has encryption.
• [DOC] /usr/local/doc/mutt

pine

• mail user agent like elm but better
• NB: Set the user domain to the correct value when you first run pine:
  1. Select "Setup"
  2. then "Configure"
  3. then set value of "user-domain" to mailhost.cs.uleth.ca

pico

• editor (but less capable than emacs and without vi's heritage)

nedit

• editor (GUI based editor similar to xemacs)

pilot

• file system browser in sytle of pine

ispell

• interactive spell checker
• [DOC] man pages, info, and /usr/local/doc

gzip,zip

• file compression

hexbin,binhex

• hex to bin (Macintosh) conversion

perl

• Perl 5 language
• See /usr/local/Perl

m4

• GNU m4 (as opposed to SUN's version)
• /usr/local/bin/m4
• Documentation in /usr/local/info (GNU texinfo document)

Astronomy

ephem,xephem

• interactive astronomical ephemeris programs
• cd /usr/local/ephem; cd /usr/local/xephem

music

abc2mtex, abc2abc, abc2midi, midi2abc, mftext

• music format conversion utilities, from/to abc format to MusicTeX (see typesetting, above) or MIDI file format.
• Documentation and sample files are available in /usr/local/music
• Additional tools for archiving and sorting abc collections are also to be found there.
• Otherwise, the binaries are in /usr/local/bin

Other

maple, xmaple

• computer algebra system. Mathematica is the only serious alternative.
• After using Maple, graphing calculators and other algebra/computational systems feel like kids toys.
• NOTE: Use xmaple when on console.
• [DOC] man entries: maple, march, mint, updtsrc
• Extensive online documentation.
• NOTES: To update Vr4 to Vr5 files see/use updtsrc.
• To access 28 MB of user contributed Maple code, use command "with(share)" in Maple and then "?share,contents" for list of packages available.
• As of 1998 April 6 the version is Maple V Release 5.

gnuplot

• plotting program
• ADDITIONAL [DOC] cd /usr/local/gnuplot (demos)

netlib

• Diff Equations stuff
• cd /usr/local/netlib

editors

emacs

• GNU projects Emacs
• GNU Emacs is a version of Emacs, written by the author of the original (PDP-10) Emacs, Richard Stallman. The primary documentation of GNU Emacs is in the GNU Emacs Manual, which you can read on line using Info, a subsystem of Emacs.
• [DOC] man emacs - for online documentation
• NOTE: to bring up the emacs editor type "emacs " - will be created if it does not exist.

te

• Text Editor enables you to create and edit short documents such as memos, mail messages, or resource files
• NOTE: to open, type "te " or "dtpad " or choose Text Editor from the font panel on you desktop

vi, view, vedit

• screen-oriented (visual) display editor based on ex
• vi (visual) is a display-oriented text editor based on an underlying line editor ex. It is possible to use the command mode of ex from within vi and to use the command mode of vi from within ex.
• [DOC] man entries: vi, view, vedit

sed

• sed (streams editor) isn't really a true text editor or text processor. Instead, it is used to filter text, i.e., it takes text input and performs some operation (or set of operations) on it and outputs the modified text. Sed is typically used for extracting part of a file using pattern matching or substituting multiple occurances of a string within a file.

SunBlade Software

• The following software packages are located in /opt/sfw on all of the new Blades. A limited set of these are available in /usr/local/bin
• NB - The man documentation may or may not reflect the latest installed versions.
• For further documentation and or information, see http://www.sunfreeware.com

Applications/Editors

gawk

• v 3.06

gnu emacs

• v 20.7

gnu sed

• v 3.02

joe

• Joes Own Editor, v 2.8

vim

• vi improved, v 5.7

xemacs

• v 21.1.14

Applications/Publishing

groff

• gnu document formatting system, v 1.16.1

texinfo

• gnu v 4.0

Applications/Utilities

diffutils

• gnu diff utilities, v 2.7.0

• Doc: man entries: diff, diff3, sdiff, and cmp

  expect

• programmed dialogue with interactive programs, v 5.31

fileutils

• the GNU fileutils package contains the basic file management utilities that are standard on a Unix-like system.

enscript

• GNU enscript is a free replacement for the Adobe's enscript program. Enscript converts ASCII files to PostScript and spools generated PostScript output to the specified printer or leaves it to file. Enscript can be easily extended to handle different output media and it has many options that can be used to customize printouts.

gettext

• v 0.10.35
• Usually, programs are written and documented in English, and use English at execution time for interacting with users. This is true not only from within GNU, but also in a great deal of commercial and free software. Using a common language is quite handy for communication between developers, maintainers and users from all countries. On the other hand, most people are less comfortable with English than with their own native language, and would rather be using their mother tongue for day to day's work, as far as possible. Many would simply love seeing their computer screen showing a lot less of English, and far more of their own language.

gs

• ghostscript v 5.50
• program for postscript and pdf file previewing, conversion, and printing

libplot

• v 2.4.1
• graphics interface libraries

• Doc: man entries: libplot, lib300, lib300s, lib4014, lib450, libvto

  wget

• v 1.6

• GNU wget is a freely available network utility to retrieve files from the World Wide Web using HTTP and FTP, the two most widely used Internet protocols. It works non-interactively, thus enabling work in the background, after having logged off. The recursive retrieval of HTML pages, as well as FTP sites, is supported: you can use Wget to make mirrors of archives and home pages, or traverse the web like a WWW robot (wget understands /robots.txt).

gnuplot

• v 3.7.1
• gnuplot is a command-driven interactive function plotting program. It can be used to plot functions and data points in both two- and three-dimensional plots in many different formats, and will accommodate many of the needs of today's scientists for graphic data representation.

grep

• v 2.4.2
• Package includes the GNU 'grep,' 'egrep,' and 'fgrep', which find lines that match entered patterns. By default, grep prints the matching lines.

tar

• v 1.13
• Can create tar archives, as well as other forms of manipulation. For example, you can use tar on previously created archives to extract files, store additional files, or update or list files which were already stored. Tar can direct its output to available devices, files, or other programs (using pipes); tar can even access remote devices or files (as archives). The program saves many files together into a single tape or disk archive, and can restore individual files from the archive. It includes multivolume support, the ability to archive parse files, automatic archive compression/ decompression, remote archives and special features that allow 'tar' to be used for incremental and full backups.

text

• v 2.0
• gnu textfile processing utilities

lynx

• v 2.8.3
• Lynx is a text browser for the World Wide Web.

mpack

• v 1.5
• encode and decode files in MIME format.

mpage

• v 2.5.1
• Mpage is a program to reduce and print multiple pages of text per sheet on a PostScript compatible printer

mpg123

• v 0.59
• play audio MPEG 1.0/2.0 file.

ncftp

• v 3.0.2
• NcFTPd is a high-performance File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server for UNIX systems, designed especially for high-traffic sites and internet service providers. It is also popular among students, home users, educational sites, and businesses.

pine

• v 4.33
• a Program for Internet News & Email - is a tool for reading, sending, and managing electronic messages. Pine was designed by the Office of Computing & Communications at the University of Washington specifically with novice computer users in mind, but it can be tailored to accommodate the needs of "power users" as well. Versions are available for various flavors of Unix as well as for personal computers running a Microsoft operating system.

procmail

• v 3.15
• mail processing package

rsync

• v 2.4.6
• sync is a replacement for rcp that has many more features

slang

• v 1.4.0
• S-Lang is a multi-platform programmer's library designed to allow a developer to create robust multi-platform software. It provides facilities required by interactive applications such as display/screen management, keyboard input, keymaps, and so on. The most exciting feature of the library is the slang interpreter that may be easily embedded into a program to make it extensible.

screen

• v 3.9.8
• Screen provides you with an ANSI/vt100 terminal emulator, which can multiplex up to 10 pseudo-terminals.

sudo

• v 1.6.3.5
• sudo is a utility that permits superuser-like access controls installs in /usr/local. The sudoers file is installed in /usr/local/etc. Note that in this version, the sudoers file cannot contain spaces or tabs before labels. This is different than in earlier versions. Therefore, if you are moving your sudoers file from a previous version, you may need to do some minor editing.

tcpdump

• v 3.6.2
• tcpdump is a tool for network monitoring and data acquisition.

top

• v 3.5_12
• Top is a program that will give continual reports about the state of the system, including a list of the top cpu using processes. Version 3 of "top" has three primary design goals: provide an accurate snapshot of the system and process state, not be one of the top processes itself, be as portable as possible.

uudeview

• v 0.5.13
• a powerful decoder for binary files

workman

• v 1.3.4
• plays audio CDs.

Desktop/Environment

gnome

• v 1.2

kde

• v 2.0.1

xFce

• v 3.7.2

cdrw

• v 1.0

Development Languages

gcc

• v 2.95.3
• GNU C/C++/FORTRAN/Java compiler package. This version of gcc and includes the GNU C, C++, FORTRAN, JAVA, and other compilers.

bison

• v 1.28
• Bison is a general-purpose parser generator that converts a grammar description for an LALR context-free grammar into a C program to parse that grammar. Once you are proficient with Bison, you can use it to develop a wide range of language parsers, from those used in simple desk calculators to complex programming languages. Bison is upward compatible with Yacc: all properly-written Yacc grammars ought to work with Bison with no change. Anyone familiar with Yacc should be able to use Bison with little trouble. You need to be fluent in C programming in order to use Bison.

flex

• v 2.5.4
• Flex is a fast lexical analyser generator. It is a tool for generating programs that perform pattern-matching on text. There are many applications for Flex, including writing compilers in conjunction with GNU Bison. Flex is a free implementation of the well known Lex program. It features a Lex compatibility mode, and also provides several new features such as exclusive start conditions.

m4

• v 1.4
• GNU `m4' is an implementation of the traditional Unix macro processor.

python

• v 1.5.2
• Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language. It is often compared to Tcl, Perl, Scheme or Java. Python combines remarkable power with very clear syntax. It has modules, classes, exceptions, very high level dynamic data types, and dynamic typing. There are interfaces to many system calls and libraries, as well as to various windowing systems (X11, Motif, Tk, Mac, MFC). New built-in modules are easily written in C or C++. Python is also usable as an extension language for applications that need a programmable interface.

tcl

• v 8.3.3
• Tcl, the tool command language. See also Tk. Get into tcl mode by with "tclsh".

tk

• v 8.3.3
• Tk, the X11 toolkit written in Tcl.

Development Libraries

aalib

• v 1.2
• AA-lib is a low level gfx library just as many other libraries are. The main difference is that AA-lib does not require graphics device. In fact, there is no graphical output possible. AA-lib replaces those old-fashioned output methods with powerful ascii-art renderer. Now my linux boots with a nice penguin logo at secondary display (yes! Like Win95 does:) AA-lib API is designed to be similar to other graphics
  libraries. Learning a new API would be a piece of cake!

audiofile

• v 0.1.9
• audiofile is a set of audio file libraries.

db

• v 3.0.55
• db is the Berkeley open source embedded database system.

esound

• v 0.2.18
• Many of todays applications use sound for various forms of feedback. Messenging applications (ICQ, AIM, etc.) use sounds to notify you of incoming messages. Many people play songs on their computers in high compression formats like RealPlayer and Mpeg layer 3. However, when two or more applications want to play sounds at the same time, it's on a first-come, first-served basis. Whoever gets to the audio device first wins. EsounD changes all of that... The Enlightened Sound Daemon mixes several audio streams for playback by a single audio device. You can also pre-load samples, and play them back without having to send all the data for the sound. Network transparency is also built in, so you can play sounds on one machine, and listen to them on another.

fnlib

• v. 0.5
• Fnlib is a library that provides full, scalable 24-bit color font rendering abilities for X.

freetype

• v 1.3.1
• The FreeType project develops free, portable and high-quality software solutions for digital typography. We specifically target embedded systems and focus on bringing small, efficient and ubiquitous products.

gcmn

• v 1.0
• common gnu package.

glib

• v 1.28
• glib is a library containing many useful C routines for things such as trees, hashes, and lists.

gtk

• v 1.2.8
• GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces, primarily designed for the X Window Systems.

guile

• v 1.3.4
• gnu's ubiquitous intelligent language for execution

imlib

• v 1.9.8.1
• imlib is an advanced replacement library for libraries like libXpm that provides many more features with much greater flexibility and speed. It was originally written for E, now used by the GNOME Project.

jpeg

• v 6
• the jpeg libraries.

lessTiff

• v 0.92.6
• GNU LessTif.

libtiff

• v 3.6.5
• libtiff is a set of C functions (a library) that support the manipulation of TIFF image files. The library requires an ANSI C compilation environment for building and presumes an ANSI C environment for use.

mpeglib

• v 1.3.1
• mpeglib is a mp3 and mpeg I video/audio library for linux.

ncurses

• v 5.2
• The Ncurses (new curses) library is a free software emulation of curses in System V Release 4.0, and more. It uses Terminfo format, supports pads and color and multiple highlights and forms characters and function-key mapping, and has all the other SYSV-curses enhancements over BSD Curses.

readline

• v 4.2
• The Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in. Both Emacs and vi editing modes are available. The Readline library includes additional functions to maintain a list of previously-entered command lines, to recall and perhaps reedit those lines, and perform csh-like history expansion on previous commands.

Development Tools

autoconf

• v 2.13
• GNU autoconf is a package for generating configure scripts.

automake

• v 1.4
• automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefiles compliant with the GNU Coding Standards. Requirements: Automake requires the use of GNU autoconf. Automake is currently written in Perl, and requires a Perl interpreter on the developer's system. The resulting Makefile.in's do not require Perl or any other "nonstandard" tool (the complete list of standard tools is mentioned in the coding standards).

binutils

• v 2.10.1
• This GNU package includes the GNU versions of the ld, as, ar, nm, ranlib, strip, strings and other programs

cvs

• v 1.11
• CVS is a version control system, and important component of Source Configuration Management (SCM). Using it, you can record the history of sources files, and documents. It fills a similar role to the free software RCS, PRCS, and Aegis packages.

ddd

• v 3.33
• GNU DDD is a graphical front-end for command-line debuggers such as GDB, DBX, WDB, Ladebug, JDB, XDB, the Perl debugger, or the Python debugger. Besides ``usual'' front-end features such as viewing source texts, DDD has become famous through its interactive graphical data display, where data structures are displayed as graphs.

gdb

• v 5.0
• The purpose of a debugger such as GDB is to allow you to see what is going on "inside" another program while it executes--or what another program was doing at the moment it crashed.

System/Daemons

samba

• v 2.0.7
• Samba is an Open Source/Free Software suite that provides seamless file and print services to SMB/CIFS clients. Samba is freely available under the GNU General Public License.

squid

• v 2.3
• Squid is a full-featured Web proxy cache designed to run on Unix systems free, open-source software the result of many contributions by unpaid (and paid) volunteers.

wuftpd

• v 2.6.2
• Wuarchive-ftpd, more affectionately known as WU-FTPD, is a replacement ftp daemon for Unix systems developed at Washington University (*.wustl.edu) by Chris Myers and later by Bryan D. O'Connor (who are no longer working on it or supporting it!). WU-FTPD is the most popular ftp daemon on the Internet, used on many anonymous ftp sites all around the world.

X/Applications

ethereal

• v 0.8.15
• Ethereal is a free network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It allows you to examine data from a live network or from a capture file on disk. You can interactively browse the capture data, viewing summary and detail information for each packet. Ethereal has several powerful features, including a rich display filter language and the ability to view the reconstructed stream of a TCP session.

gimp

• v 1.2.1
• The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. Gimp requires that aalib-1.2, glib-1.2.10, gtk+-1.2.10, jpeg-6b, libpng-1.0.2, mpeg_lib-1.3.1, tiff-v3.4beta037, zlib-1.1.3 and xpm-3.4k be pre-installed.

gtk+

• v 1.2.8
• GTK+ is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK+ is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to complete application suites. GTK+ is free software and part of the GNU Project.

rxvt

• v 2.6.3
• rxvt is a colour vt102 terminal emulator intended as an xterm(1) replacement for users who do not require features such as Tektronix 4014 emulation and toolkit-style configurability. As a result, rxvt uses much less swap space -- a significant advantage on a machine serving many X sessions.
• rxvt [options] [-e command [ args ]]

xeyes

• v 1.0
• xeyes draws two "eyes" which follow the mouse pointer around as it moves!

xmcd

• v 2.6
• Motif cd audio player

xterm

• v 146
• xterm supporting color