I'm shopping for useful linux programs. I've used linux mainly on servers, but now I'm switching so my dev environment matches production more closely,and installing ubuntu desktop. What would you install on a fresh Ubuntu desktop?
Glipper: Clipboard history manager. A pale imitation of the old Klipper for KDE 3.5.
Banshee: Arguably a better music player than the default. Honestly, I was a big fan of the old Amarok, but KDE 4.0 in general has too many problems and lost functionality for me to use yet.
* To UNinstall:
Totem video player, or at least the Totem plugin for Firefox: It tends to be very crashy, at least for me. Replace the plugin with mplayerplug-in.
* New repositories to add:
Medibuntu: http://www.medibuntu.org/ has restricted and non-free software. Easiest way to get DVD playback, and I would recommend installing mplayer and win64codecs/win32codecs from here. Also, tools like Acrobat.
Htop for monitoring system resources in real time, VirtualBox for running different OSes, Wine for some Windows games and apps, Deluge as a BitTorrent client. Conky is a great productivity booster and nice on the eyes too.
Then get the packages needed for playing all media files, and I think that's about it.
Oh, I forgot, Pidgin rlz.
Amarok--It's a KDE music player, and it's really good. It seems faster than rhythmbox, has good librarying, and even integrates with Last.fm
I like konversation (another KDE program) as my IRC client, but I've only dabbled in the other ones briefly.
(Note: your first few KDE programs take awhile to install because they have to install a lot of kde libraries and the like.)
Opera--It's not in the package manager, but it's an easy install from http://opera.com, and it's faster and in some cases better than FF. For example, Firefox doesn't like being disconnected and won't let you get even to localhost when it's in "offline mode" without some tweaking.
Your favorite editor, obviously (both emacs and vim are in the package manager).
If you have a slower computer, I suggest looking into other windowing systems. Up until a month ago, my main computer was an ancient computer with 384MB of RAM and a 1.6GHz single-core processor. Awhile ago my productivity was being hurt so much that I looked into minimalist window managers. I chose icewm, but there are other good ones. It really did make a big difference.
I wouldn't install Amarok (avoid loading Qt in Gnome and vice versa). RhythmBox does not handle an iPod well if that matters for you, but Banshee does. Banshee relies on Mono.
Zim is a little-known note-taking tool that relies on text files and uses a Wiki format.
AbiWord and Gnumeric are good programs to have around when you don't want to start MS Office. Copy the .ttf and .otf font files from your Windows machine and install them in Linux if you want them available.
Oops... meant to reply to my own post above, not edit it. For clarity sake, it used to ask for notepad equivalents. (I know see the installed editor is very nice, unlike os x). I'd fix it, but the edit link is gone...
Be sure to check out the plugins available to gedit (http://live.gnome.org/GeditPlugins), especially the File Browser Pane, Session Saver, etc. They really add a lot of functionality.
Our parent seems to have edited his post to be abouit desktop widgets, so you may be right about him referring to notepad equivalents (or not).
But why do you think comparing GEdit to TM is ridiculous? Both have syntax highlighting, auto indentation, inbuilt terminals, tabs, and other programmer specific features. Neither are emacs style user environments with mail checkers and other unrelated stuff. Also GE and TM have far more discoverable configuration tweaking.
I've started using Tilda recently, its alright not quite as polished as Visor for Mac (Both of these are Quake style dropdown terminals) I'll have to try out Guake.
Also, I have not played with compiz, and I'm wondering if people have found it to be straightforward and easy to live with? It looks fun, but if it makes my life harder. Thoughts?
I can't exist without Compiz and I'm amazed that HN audience is unaware of the benefits. Here are just a few:
1. Expose-like effect for quickly tiling all windows and picking the right one with the mouse/touchpad. Works MUCH faster for s witching between apps when you have many of them.
2. Very useful and informative animations for tossing windows between virtual desktops and switching between them: without Compiz there's no animation and you're left wondering which desktop you're on.
3. Window groups - a fairly advanced feature which also helps navigating among too many windows.
4. On some video drivers Compiz speeds up 2D graphics (especially scrolling) in regular everyday apps like Firefox.
5. Ability to quickly glance at your desktop (whenever all windows fly offscreen until you release a hot key).
6. Ability to "pin" certain windows into predefined positions automatically or by a configured hotkey. Helps enormously with buggy apps that can't remember their last position.
Basically it all comes down to window management. Without Compiz all you have a basic and primitive Alt+Tabbing plus basic virtual desktop functionality. I switch between Ubuntu and OSX and I use these tools on both very heavily. When I get a hardware which doesn't run Compiz I tend to stick to OSX until the issue is resolved. When I do have Compiz-enabled machine my Mac becomes a backup - OSX isn't as powerful/flexible at managing windows as Metacity/Compiz.
Besides, I find that windows without shadows look very flat and somewhat antiquated in 2008 :-)
Someone else has already mentioned installing compiz-config-manager. This is crucial if you want to do any kind of customization with Compiz; a lot of little annoyances I've found with it can be fixed.
I've been using Thunderbird, and I hate it. I want a more functional UI and better search. Gmail is great, but I want my own local mail store. Any suggestions for a better mail client?
Have a look at Kmail (or Kontact which intergrates Kmail with Korganiser & KAddressbook). Evolution ain't too bad either, but seems to have gotten buggy (or buggier) in recent years.
installed:
vim-full
dwm
mercurial
lighttpd
mplayer
mpg123
xpdf
ImageMagick
qiv
vifm (there's a vim-like photo manager, but i forget its name)
wink
vnc (server and client)
ssh server
gftp (the ftp cli sucks big time, unlike one in openbsd ... and no axyftp)
opera
swiftweasel
java 6 jre (for ameritrade)
adobe flash (for google analytics)
uninstall:
basically games, default bloated software, useless hypocrate softwares that only play free format, etc
GNOME Do: http://do.davebsd.com/ It's like Quicksilver for OS X, only more so.
Glipper: Clipboard history manager. A pale imitation of the old Klipper for KDE 3.5.
Banshee: Arguably a better music player than the default. Honestly, I was a big fan of the old Amarok, but KDE 4.0 in general has too many problems and lost functionality for me to use yet.
* To UNinstall:
Totem video player, or at least the Totem plugin for Firefox: It tends to be very crashy, at least for me. Replace the plugin with mplayerplug-in.
* New repositories to add:
Medibuntu: http://www.medibuntu.org/ has restricted and non-free software. Easiest way to get DVD playback, and I would recommend installing mplayer and win64codecs/win32codecs from here. Also, tools like Acrobat.
Wine: http://www.winehq.org/download/deb These are usually much more up-to-date than Ubuntu's repository, if you need Wine.