Ask HN: New Ubuntu Desktop--what would you install?
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?
62 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] thread(I still enable it to show off to friends about how cool Linux is though, sometimes :D)
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 :-)
Also the desktop cube helps when you're using 4 virtual desktops and can't remember which desktop had what running
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.
It's also written in Haskell, so it has enhanced coolness as well. No ubuntu package as far as I know, but it isn't hard to build from source.
XVidCap - if you want to make screencasts
KdenLive - for video editing
(and unstripped codecs, I re-compiled ffmpeg)
MySQL Administrator and Query Browser - for pokin around MySQL
VirtualBox - for running other OSes
inkscape -- Vector Drawing
gobby -- collective editor
pgadminIII -- PostgreSQL GUI
EasyTAG -- mp3 tagging
dia -- diagram editor
GIMP -- photo editing (already installed most likely)
phatch -- batch photo manipulation
mercurial -- Distributed Version Control brings Meld which is a GUI merge program
emacs22-nox -- because I like it that way.
gnumeric -- because the numbers do matter.
python-${handy} -- my work environment has a swollen dependency tree :P
That's my list, but I'm a boring person who doesn't really play video games.
Rails On Ubuntu < You cannot miss this.
//me likes to know what application is doing. Not guess.
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.
Inkscape is good to have around for drawing.
What else do you think you'll need?
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.
A nice panel applet can be found in the repos under the package name "timer-applet", which I find comes in very handy at times.
sudo apt-get install subversion git imagemagick oprofile ssh manpages-dev g++ gcc libtool autoconf automake emacs vim compizconfig-settings-manager valgrind inkscape
Might be something interesting in there for you with a little googling.
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.
Tellico - my favorite book manager
VLC Movie Player
VMWare(take your pick)
XChat
HPLIP Fax Utility
Azureus
IDEs(KDevelop, Netbeans, DrScheme, Quanta, IDLE)
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
1.) Music: moc (Music on Console)
2.) Irc: irssi
3.) Editing: vim
4.) Mail/News: mutt
dzen2 - simple (but very configurable) statusbar
screen and surfraw
w3m - excellent text-based web-browser
mpd and ncmpc - for music
mutt - for email (if you don't use emacs)
bitlbee - an irc proxy that handles most other instant messaging protocols
irssi - irc (or e.g. rcirc in emacs)
cowsay and figlet :)
xwrits - typing timer
rsync - for backups (set it up with cron)
git or mercurial (whatever, pick one)
good windowmanagers: xmonad, dwm, wmii, blackbox
Common theme: non-flashy, shell/keyboard-oriented stuff. If you like several of those, you will probably like most the rest.
* workrave (similar to xwrits, but IMHO less annoying and better GUI support)
* swiftfox (has debian package, customized ff build for your CPU)
* worker (directory opus clone -- i don't use it that often, but it comes in handy from time to time)
As much as I like ubuntu, Arch linux just makes more sense to me. It doesn't do anything you don't want it to.
Seriously though, zsh is nice bash replacement. VLC is a great media player and Enlightenment is a nice GUI.
Actually, check out Etoile (etoileos.com) too; its a really nice GUI that's based off of OpenStep and its really pretty and usable.