Ask HN: Ubuntu Must-Have Apps

3 points by dawie ↗ HN
I just loaded the latest version of Ubuntu (9.04) What apps would you recommend I get right away?

11 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 62.2 ms ] thread
It really depends on what you want to do. I like to have Wine installed so that I can run some Windows apps, but if you don't use Windows, that will be less important. I've also used QEMU in the past to run a virtual Windows machine inside of Linux.

I use Google Chrome for normal browsing and Firefox for development, so I would try to get Chromium working.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxBuildInstruction...

I also use vlc for playing DVDs, video, and audio clips.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ubuntu.html

There aren't really any killer opensource apps that Ubuntu is missing. The fast majority of what you will need for development is available in the repositories.

I suggest: Openoffice.org - stable (3.1.0?),kivio or dia - diagramming,opera and/or firefox,gnucash,abobe acrobat reader (acroread), qcad, hp device manager (hplip?) if you have an hp printer, vlc media player, glabels - business cards and the like (I just prefer this to OOo for this purpose)

This software covers most of my office/design type needs.

HoN if you like games, currently in beta.I have a few invites left if you want one.
Here are the first things I install:

aptitude install firefox-3.5 (Ubuntu 9.04 shipped with Firefox 3.0 by default).

Nightly builds of Chromium: https://launchpad.net/~chromium-daily/+archive/ppa

miro (simple "internet TV" video podcast player)

thunderbird, gnumeric, abiword (my preferred lighter-weight alternatives to the default Evolution and OpenOffice apps)

gnome-do (like the OS X app Quicksilver)

inkscape (vector drawing)

git, git-svn, mercurial, darcs, bzr, subversion, cvs

irb, rubygems

If you "sudo apt-get grammar" you can get an app that will teach you how to properly use hyphens so you don't say things like "Ubuntu must have apps" which implies that Ubuntu doesn't have applications but you think it must.
Oh, you changed it just to spite me! :-)

Except "Ubuntu-must-have-apps" is just as bad! The hyphen goes between "must" and "have" to signal that "must" is part of an adjective and not a verb!

I know Grammar Nazis on the Internet are annoying but people will think you are not smart. You know how it's a really big turn-off when you read Craigslist posts and girls are like "your really funny" and you just wince? It's like that! Except without the girls!
(comment deleted)
I just came across this: Scribes - Textmate for Ubuntu and it made we wonder if there was any other hidden Gems.
if you don't have them already: build-essentials, python, svn

Chromium is also a must.