Free to launch software for linux

TabLaunch is a simple and lightweight but cool-looking X application launch bar based on YeahLaunch. It displays a user-specified list of applications as tabs along the top of the screen.

The user can specify an x coordinate offset to position the launch bar or right-align it. The launch bar becomes hidden after a specified delay.

Each tab can be displayed as text or an icon. Tabs are "enlarged" or zoomed-in when the mouse is over a tab. Imlib or Imlib2 can be used to show and enlarge icons.

X-Launch is a GTK-based skinnable run dialog.
It has bash style autocompletion, skin support, and animations to let you know when a slow application is launching.
It can function like other run dialogs, but you can also tell it to stay resident in memory and hide itself after it launches an application.
X-Launch not only looks better then any other Run dialog, but is more powerful and faster then most. It will manage its own hotkey, so you dont have to have a window manager that supports hotkeys and it doesnt have to launch every time you want to launch an application.
For those of you out there that are avid keyboard users, especially for launching applications, then this program is for you.
Main features:
- Launch applications easily from a command interface
- Fresh looking skinable user interface
- Set a hotkey to bring up the launch window
- Animations to let you know a slow program is launching
- Full command history that has smart sorting (last used, first shown)
- Inline command history, no need for using arrows or tab to select command
- Tab completion for executable file in your path
- Tab completion for directories
- Edit your history easily.
- Configurable behavor after an application is launched.
- Smart app technology that will figure out if you have typed a valid application.

Prelaunch is a utility for the Linux desktop which significantly decrease the time to launch programs.

Pre- launch start the respective program during login not visible to the user. With this trick the real launch needs no time. It is written in C and GTK.

*Prelaunch will work with every desktop environment but only Gnome is supported at the moment (Adding new apps...).

Toolwrap is a wrapper tool (a program which starts other program), which may be used to launch applications according to defined preferences (or policies).

Thanks to toolwrap, many releases of a given application can coexist, and may be deployed on a single workstation or made available on a files server. Policy files allow different users to use different versions transparently.

Environment files control which binaries to use and prepare the environment before starting the application.

Compiling

Compiling toolwrap should be as simple as :

./configure --prefix=/opt &&
make

Installation

If toolwrap compiles successfully, run make install to get the following tree & files created (assuming that /opt was specified at the "configure" step):

/opt
/opt/bin/toolwrap
/opt/pkgs
/opt/etc
/opt/etc/toolwrap-policies
/opt/env
/opt/env/__default__

/opt/bin/toolwrap is the wrapper itself. Wrapped binaries will be symlinked to toolwrap.
/opt/etc/toolwrap-policies holds the default wrapping policies. See policy. Policies indicate which package must be used when a tool is invoked.
/opt/etc/env/__default__ defines how the environment must be set up before starting a tool, and which binary is executed.

Gizmo Daemon is the Linux Input Device Utility.
Ever want to make use of those keyboard keys and mouse buttons that X wont let you use? Ever want to quickly define a keyboard shortcut to do something like change or mute the volume? Ever want to use your joystick, second mouse, Griffin PowerMate, or any other random device you can think of to do fun things like control applications, switch desktops, switch tracks in XMMS / BMP, launch programs, or do pretty much anything else you can think of?
Are you a MythTV user? Got an RF or IR (LIRC) Remote? Annoyed with how frustrating it is to map keys, or is the remote super touchy? Would you like a simple easy way to configure your remote, and have it function properly at the same time? Want to have different key maps based on what application is currently being used?
Gizmo Daemon does all of that, and more! Gizmo Daemon operates on a fairly simple philosophy: let the user decide. Any and all device events are sent to the configuration scripts, and from there the user can decide what should be done with those events. A number of functions are exposed to the scripts which allows the script to interact with any of the loaded device plugins in any way desired.
Main features:
- Control any application with any device
- Utilize those special keys on your fancy keyboard, even if your X server or terminal doesnt support them! Now you can actually make the volume controls change the volume, or the media buttons control XMMS / BMP! Set the buttons to launch your favorite programs, switch virtual desktops, or run whatever application you want!
- Give per application key mappings, very handy for remote users!
- Fix touchy remotes by removing quick duplicate keystrokes
- Control system mixer volume
- Change virtual desktops (only for EWMH capable window managers)
- Launch programs
- Send keyboard and mouse events to applications
- Send device events from one device to another, or create fake device events (control a mouse cursor with a joystick, or keyboard)
- Visualization of system events such as CPU USage, and XMMS / BMP sound output on visual devices (such as the LED on the Griffin PowerMate USB Dial).
- Fancy on screen displays via XOSD. Now your workstation or MythTV box can have nice TV friendly volume displays controlled by your remote!
- And more! Anything you can think of is probably possible
Enhancements:
- Add Powermate setRotateSensitivity function
- New variable in GizmoDeviceStrings.py called
POWERMATE_ROTATE_SENSITIVITY for this!
- Add PowermateEvent ClickTime property (duration of button press)
- Add GizmodThread class for creating threads from Python
- DO NOT USE!! (HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL!)
- Add GizmodTimer class for creating timer objects from Python
- Add script 200-Powermate-ButtonTimeout for generating button
timeout events
- New variable in GizmoDeviceStrings.py called
POWERMATE_BUTTON_TIMEOUT for this!
- Add script 201-Powermate-Beryl
- So far this detects a powermate button timeout and
unfolds the beryl cube, and lets you scroll the unfolded
cube with the dial
- Add base script GizmoScriptAltTabber so that devices have an
easy way of sending Alt-Tab events
- New variable in GizmoDeviceStrings.py called
ALT_TAB_TIMEOUT for this!
- Add remote ?00-Intercept scripts for alt-tabbing support
- This allows the default mapping to start alt-tab
and to still alt-tab passed applications (if alt-tab
actually focuses apps) if those apps happen to use
the same button that initialized the alt-tab
- Add Gizmod namespace to libGizmod

Verve plugin is a comfortable command line plugin for the Xfce panel.
Main features:
- Command history
- Auto-completion (including command history)
- Open URLs and eMail addresses in your favourite applications
- Focus grabbing via D-BUS (so you can bind a shortcut to it)
- Custom input field width
Usage:
Once added to the panel, you can use the following keys to control Verve:
- TAB to iterate through auto-completion entries
- UP and DOWN arrows to iterate through the command history
- CTRL+ENTER to run a command in a terminal emulator
- ESC to clear your input
If you want to launch URLs or eMail addresses using Verve, just paste them into the input field and press ENTER.
Focus Grabbing
Verve installs a script named verve-focus which can be used to bind a keyboard shorcut for Verve to grab the focus. To do so, you first need to open the Xfce settings manager:
xfce-setting-show
Once the dialog has appeared, chose Keyboard. In the next dialog, select the Shortcuts tab and add a shortcut for verve-focus.
After this, Verve should grab the focus and start blinking whenever you press this shortcut. To stop the blinking, just type something (like a command or something else) or click on it with the mouse

LXPanel is a lightweight X11 desktop panel based on fbpanel.
Main features:
- User-friendly application menu automatically generated from *.desktop files on the system.
- Launcher bar (Small icons clicked to launch apps)
- Task bar supporting urgency hint (Can flash when gaim gets new incoming messages)
- Notification area (System tray)
- Digital clock
- Run dialog (A dialog let you type a command and run, can be called in external programs)
- Net status icon plug-in (optional, ported from gnome-netstatus-applet)
- Volume control plug-in (optional, written by jserv)
- lxpanelctl, an external controller let you control lxpanel in other programs. For example, "lxpanelctl run" will show the Run dialog in lxpanel, and "lxpanelctl menu" will show the application menu. This is useful in key bindings provided by window managers.
LXPanel is based on fbpanel originally written by Anatoly Asviyan.
./configure --help to see available options. (default options is quite OK, though)
Please take a look at /usr/share/lxpanel/default to understand the configuration.
The config file of lxpanel is different from fbpanels.

Tea4CUPS project is similar in functionnality to the GNU/Linux tee command, but available as a 100% plug and play generic CUPS backend wrapper.
Tea4CUPS is the Swiss Armys knife of the advanced CUPS administrator, and can easily replace or extend most of the existing specialized CUPS backends (pdf, email, ftp, etc...)
You are greatly encouraged to use this software instead of writing your own CUPS backends : Tea4CUPS will let you plug your own scripts, filters, tools, or commands wherever you want, while giving them access to all the print jobs characteristics in a consistent way.
Tea4CUPS is a 100% Python written standalone script distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License of the Free Software Foundation.
Tea4CUPS provides three ways to launch commands :
filters : A filter can modify the input datas before they are sent to the printer or made available to the pre and post hooks defined below. Currently a single filter can be defined per print queue.
prehooks : these are guaranteed to be launched before the print job is sent to the real printer. Any prehook which exits -1 can cancel the print job. Any number of prehooks can be defined for a particular print queue.
posthooks : these are guaranteed to be launched after the print job has been sent to the real printer, unless the job was previously cancelled by a prehook. Any number of posthooks can be defined for a particular print queue.
Enhancements:
- Access to the same printer devices by different print queues or print servers is now serialized to avoid problems.
- Support for CUPS 1.2.x and higher was improved.
- The administrator can now stop tea4cups with SIGINT.
- A configurable retry directive in the configuration file gives you more control over what to do when the real CUPS backend fails.
- The documentation and sample configuration file were improved.