

Ask HN: New Ubuntu Desktop--what would you install? - ericb

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?
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drinian
* To install: These should be in the repository; use synaptic for keyword search.

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.

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olefoo
pidgin -- multiprotocol IM client

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.

~~~
siong1987
<http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/RailsOnUbuntu>

Rails On Ubuntu < You cannot miss this.

~~~
olefoo
I don't miss it; I avoid it.

//me likes to know what application is doing. Not guess.

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paulgb
If you use vim, vim-full is better than vim-tiny which comes installed.

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.

~~~
matthewking
This one always catches me out on a clean install of Ubuntu, if I remember
correctly you can't use "vi file.txt" with vim-tiny.

~~~
ralph
I think "vi foo" works just fine with vim-tiny. If it didn't, it would be vim-
empty.

~~~
matthewking
I think you have to type "vim foo" with vim-tiny.

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nx
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.

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silentbicycle
dmenu - launcher

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.

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ejs
Some of the apps I use frequently

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

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jackowayed
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.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'd suggest looking at xmonad for the other windowing system. You never need
to use your mouse again (though you can if you want to).

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.

~~~
silentbicycle
Dwm and wmii are along the same lines, but written in C, in case you happen to
be running an architecture whose GHC port is lagging.

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thomasmallen
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.

Inkscape is good to have around for drawing.

What else do you think you'll need?

~~~
ericb
Also, how about any equivalent to the os x desktop widgets? I like having
time, weather and a calendar right there.

~~~
ejs
I like gedit for this purpose, but I think its standard on ubuntu.

~~~
ericb
Just got to it... Looks nice. Have yet to find one on OS X I really liked.

~~~
thomasmallen
Well, the Mac equivalent is TextEdit. I use xPad to take notes, and it has a
file drawer. Nice freeware app.

~~~
nailer
Mac equivalent to gedit would be TextMate, not TextEdit, which isn't a
programmer's editor.

~~~
thomasmallen
He was asking about NotePad equivalents. And to call GEdit comparable to TM is
ridiculous. Emacs is a much better comparison.

~~~
nailer
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.

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ev0
Does anyone here use Guake? I have an addiction for Quake style dropdown
console terminals. <http://guake-terminal.org/>

~~~
niels
I use Yakuake, the KDE equivalent. I'm addicted too.

~~~
davbo
Thanks for this, just installed!

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lbrandy
Well, here's exactly what I install on a fresh Ubuntu desktop machine (it's my
script, copy/pasted).

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.

------
CaptainMorgan
Unison - <http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/>

Tellico - my favorite book manager

VLC Movie Player

VMWare(take your pick)

XChat

HPLIP Fax Utility

Azureus

IDEs(KDevelop, Netbeans, DrScheme, Quanta, IDLE)

------
ericb
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?

~~~
PieSquared
Eh. It's shiny and nice, but in the end, it's pretty useless. I lived with it
for a month, then figured that it didn't do much good, and disabled it.

(I still enable it to show off to friends about how cool Linux is though,
sometimes :D)

~~~
wheels
Same here. Thought it was pretty neat at first, but it doesn't do a good job
of balancing functionality and bling.

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aneesh
There's a nice list from a previous thread here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132082>

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speek
Arch Linux :-D

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.

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tsally
I prefer console apps:

1.) Music: moc (Music on Console)

2.) Irc: irssi

3.) Editing: vim

4.) Mail/News: mutt

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poppinphresh
Pidgin - IM client

PHP, Apache, Postgresql, pgadmin III

SongBird - Media player

Eclipse - IDE

Xchat - IRC Client

VLC - Video player

RTorrent - Torrent downloader

Subversion - Version Control

------
ericb
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?

~~~
mickt
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.

------
hs
i prefer xubuntu

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

------
jrp
Don't install things until you're ready to use them; otherwise, you'll find
yourself spending too long browsing packages.

~~~
ericb
Yeah but I don't know what the good stuff is, and knowing is half the battle.

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sb
since nobody mentioned them before:

* 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)

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mapleoin
here's a post I wrote last month on what I do every time I install a new linux
system. The same steps apply to any recent gnome distro.
<http://mapleoin.bluepink.ro/perma/after-install-work>

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rms
Exaile is my media player of choice.

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cperciva
I'd install my depenguinator. :-)

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asjo
bubblemon - bubbling load monitor

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ktharavaad
errr.. Wine? J/K =P

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utx00
emacs

