Twitux is a Twitter client designed for use in Linux. The application is written in C and uses GTK+ for the GUI. The name Twitux is presumably a mashup of Twitter and Tux, the traditionally heralded Linux mascot. The current release of Twitux is version 0.62, which was released on April 29, 2008.

Installation/Setup:

If you’re trying to install from source, I kept running into all sorts of broken dependencies and missing libraries, even though I verified they were all installed and up to date. It was much easier when I grabbed it out of the package repositories with apt-get install twitux in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy).

Setting up the app took a little more work. I entered my credentials and was then prompted to give Twitux access to the system keyring to store the password. After allowing it access, I was logged in to Twitux. The next time I launched the app, I was prompted for my password so it could retrieve it from the keyring, which defeats the purpose of having it store my password.

User Interface:

The UI for Twitux is very simple. The application doesn’t support many features, which translates to simplicity of the UI. All you get here is a display of tweets Twitux knows of and nothing more. A cool feature of Twitux’s UI is that you can change views to the public timeline, your timeline, your friends’ timeline (the people you follow), a specific friend, your replies, your direct messages, or the timeline for @twitux.

User Experience:

Twitux is extremely simple to use because it’s a simple application. There are neither bells nor whistles to slow the user and there are no menus to be familiar with. I do feel robbed of the typically rich third-party client experience that comes with Twitter clients because there aren’t any application-specific features or any of the standard features (replying, viewing profile, etc) included in the application.

Features:

If there is one area where a reviewer can afford to be hard on Twitter clients, it’s on the features. Because there are so many Twitter clients floating around, the features a client has will make or break it. Twitux has virtually no features to speak of. It’s very basic, allowing users to read and send tweets. You won’t find a reply button, the ability to view a profile, or retweet functionality in this application. The thing that really irks me is that links contained within a tweet are not clickable. The one feature in Twitux that I don’t see very often is the ability to add a new friend directly from the application. To get new tweets, you can either wait for the application to refresh (can be set for every 3, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes), or you can hit F5 to refresh it on demand.

Sadly, the best feature of this application is its notification system. Notifications can be turned on or off and pop up as a non-intrusive balloon near the system tray icon.

In the Linux world, the pool of Twitter clients is far shallower than in the Windows or Mac worlds. For this reason, I’m able to forgive some of the immaturity, or absence, of the application’s feature set. It has the chance to be the best, but the developers are clearly fine with settling for mediocrity.

Performance:

When the app was running, I didn’t find any problems with slowness or lag. System resource use wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Outside of a few unexplained app crashes, the only performance quirk I’m deducting for is having to allow access to the system keyring each time the user wants to launch the application.

Overall Impression:

A prime indication of the developer’s dedication to the project is to look at the last time @twitux sent an update (July 4, 2008) and the frequency with which the lead developer, @daniminas, sends tweets. There is another developer on the project, @bpepple, who updates more frequently. I feel like this project has been abandoned and won’t see any new features or functionality. For further proof, check out the ignored Feature Requests section of the project page, specifically looking at the lack of action on any feature requests.

I have a hard time justifying giving this app a 2.5 because I don’t feel like it gives me any incentive to use it instead of the web interface. I really wanted to like Twitux because I know there are so many Linux users out there looking for a good desktop client. The simple, painful truth is that Twitux gives me no reason to want to use it.

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