Best applications from the Ubuntu Software Centre

shizz

Hey guys, I recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop and liking it so far. I have installed a few applications from the software centre that I had planned on doing but was just wondering if there are any that people here would recommend to install?

I dont mind what category they are from but if you could give a brief description of why it's good that would be cool.

BTW does anyone know of any software thats good for someone interested in getting started off in some programming? I'm not sure where to start.

Stuxnet

celestia is an awesome program i think, its an astromomy app, I love it !

for beginner programming have a look at robocode ! fun way to start basics !
if you want to tear into the nitty gritty of programming download the java-jdk in synaptics and download this compiler/editor called BlueJ, its good for beginners
http://www.bluej.org/

Pygmalion

shizz wrote: »

BTW does anyone know of any software thats good for someone interested in getting started off in some programming? I'm not sure where to start.

I really like Python as a programming language, it's fairly easy compared to most.

Here's an MIT Intro to Comp. Sci and Programming course that uses Python as the language.
Seems pretty good, although I only ever saw it after I had already learned Python, so can't say for sure :P.

You should have Python installed by default since IIRC a few of the Ubuntu apps are written in it.

Jagera

iPwnage wrote: »

celestia is an awesome program i think, its an astromomy app, I love it !

I really like Stellarium. Its in the Featured section. Just googled Celestia, so I might have a gander at that too.

m8

Virtualbox it's a virtual machine where you can run windows or any other os for those apps you can't do without or just to check out an os on you Laptop.

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox

shizz

Pygmalion wrote: »

I really like Python as a programming language, it's fairly easy compared to most.

Here's an MIT Intro to Comp. Sci and Programming course that uses Python as the language.
Seems pretty good, although I only ever saw it after I had already learned Python, so can't say for sure :P.

You should have Python installed by default since IIRC a few of the Ubuntu apps are written in it.

That open course looks very interesting. What's the story with them though? Do you have to sign up anywhere or just view the video's at your leisure?

Khannie

Pygmalion wrote: »

I really like Python as a programming language, it's fairly easy compared to most.

As a seasoned coder, I couldn't disagree more. I flipping *hate* python.

I'd recommend Java as a good starting point myself.

Cmc29

Here are some programmes that i find very good and use on a regular basis. Don't know how many, if any, will interest you but i thought i would mention them as i'm sure someone reading the thread might get something out of it too -

Gimp - Image editor. It's fully featured and you can do a HUGE amount of what photoshop is capable of. There is a lot about it online (meetthegimp.org is a great site for tutorials). Don't let the interface put you off, as it does with a lot of people. It really isn't very hard to use and you can get great results out of it.

Inkscape - In my opinion, the best vector graphics editor on Linux, although a lot of people also swear by xara xtreme. If you are into working with vector graphics give them both a try but i would recommend inkscape.

Banshee - This is set to be the default in 11.04. Has all the features you could possibly want from any music player. Very good and can be customised with addition plugins. Has great support for ipods, etc.

Ardour - Digital audio recorder. If you're into music at all this is great for recording and mixing your music on. Very stable and fully featured. You can download plugins for this in the repos so you can add reverb, compression, etc to get your mix sounding good. If you do want to look for the plugins, search for LADSPA plugins.

Rosegarden - If midi music is your thing this is a fully featured midi sequencer.

Audacity - Audio editor. Plain and simple interface yet is very powerful for editing audio files.

Hydrogen - If you like creating drum beats this programme is great. Easy to programme and you can add your custom kits. You can use it for creating electronic beats or to mimic an acoustic kit. With your own samples you can make it sound pretty much however you want.

JACK - Stands for Jack Audio Connection Kit. A great little programme if you are into making music. It acts as a patchbay so you can connection up all your music production programmes together, eg, hook up hydrogen and rosegarden into ardour so you can take advantage of the functionality of more than one programme for recording your music.

Frozen bubble - Simple fun bubble bursting game featuring penguins

On the light side -

Abiword - lightweight, fully featured word processor. If you want features but don't want bloat this is the programme for you. Open Office can be overkill for some people. Abiword has all the basic functionalities you would use and then some.

Guayadeque - lightweight audio player that doesn't skimp on features. I'm pretty sure this is in the repos for 10.10. Has a great feature where it will create an autoplaylist for you based on music you start off with in your play queue. It pulls the information from last FM. Very handy feature.

Ubuntu Tweak - This is just a handy programme to have on any Ubuntu install. It doesn't come in the software center i'm afraid but i would recommend it. Easy way to configure your system and has it's own repository. Website - http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

shizz

Cmc29 wrote: »

Here are some programmes that i find very good and use on a regular basis. Don't know how many, if any, will interest you but i thought i would mention them as i'm sure someone reading the thread might get something out of it too -

Gimp - Image editor. It's fully featured and you can do a HUGE amount of what photoshop is capable of. There is a lot about it online (meetthegimp.org is a great site for tutorials). Don't let the interface put you off, as it does with a lot of people. It really isn't very hard to use and you can get great results out of it.

Inkscape - In my opinion, the best vector graphics editor on Linux, although a lot of people also swear by xara xtreme. If you are into working with vector graphics give them both a try but i would recommend inkscape.

Banshee - This is set to be the default in 11.04. Has all the features you could possibly want from any music player. Very good and can be customised with addition plugins. Has great support for ipods, etc.

Ardour - Digital audio recorder. If you're into music at all this is great for recording and mixing your music on. Very stable and fully featured. You can download plugins for this in the repos so you can add reverb, compression, etc to get your mix sounding good. If you do want to look for the plugins, search for LADSPA plugins.

Rosegarden - If midi music is your thing this is a fully featured midi sequencer.

Audacity - Audio editor. Plain and simple interface yet is very powerful for editing audio files.

Hydrogen - If you like creating drum beats this programme is great. Easy to programme and you can add your custom kits. You can use it for creating electronic beats or to mimic an acoustic kit. With your own samples you can make it sound pretty much however you want.

JACK - Stands for Jack Audio Connection Kit. A great little programme if you are into making music. It acts as a patchbay so you can connection up all your music production programmes together, eg, hook up hydrogen and rosegarden into ardour so you can take advantage of the functionality of more than one programme for recording your music.

Frozen bubble - Simple fun bubble bursting game featuring penguins

On the light side -

Abiword - lightweight, fully featured word processor. If you want features but don't want bloat this is the programme for you. Open Office can be overkill for some people. Abiword has all the basic functionalities you would use and then some.

Guayadeque - lightweight audio player that doesn't skimp on features. I'm pretty sure this is in the repos for 10.10. Has a great feature where it will create an autoplaylist for you based on music you start off with in your play queue. It pulls the information from last FM. Very handy feature.

Ubuntu Tweak - This is just a handy programme to have on any Ubuntu install. It doesn't come in the software center i'm afraid but i would recommend it. Easy way to configure your system and has it's own repository. Website - http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

Yeah ive heard of GIMP alright and I have been usin inkscape for along time now.

Ive used Hydrogen before alright and I really like the sound of Ardour Thanks very much for ur input

BopNiblets

Try Pinta instead of GIMP if you're looking for something simpler.
http://pinta-project.com/

Pygmalion

shizz wrote: »

That open course looks very interesting. What's the story with them though? Do you have to sign up anywhere or just view the video's at your leisure?

Nah no need to sign up, just watch at your leisure, there's some assignments to download and stuff as well I think.

Khannie wrote: »

As a seasoned coder, I couldn't disagree more. I flipping *hate* python.

I'd recommend Java as a good starting point myself.

Java is icky tbh

evercloserunion

If you use the terminal at all (or if you plan to start), try Guake, it's really handy. It's just a drop-down terminal which you can summon at the touch of a button, like F11 or F12. It's also handy if you're going to be using Python or any interpreted language, IMO.

For programming, obviously a good editor is important. Gedit is a good editor but Geany provides more functions to help you when programming. But I'm sure almost everyone here has their own favourite IDE/editor.

OpenOffice or LibreOffice as a word processor. Right now they are very similar but I think that from now on LibreOffice will develop at a faster pace then OpenOffice. AbiWord is a more lightweight choice but in my experience Open/LibreOffice have better compatibility with .doc and .docx formatted documents, which is very important.

Evolution is a good email client/calendar app for Gnome. Liferea is a good RSS feed reader for Gnome.

If you like games, try:

Battle for Wesnoth, a turn-based strategy;
Warzone2100, a real-time strategy with a heavy emphasis on research and vehicle design;
OpenTTD, a transport simulator;
Sauerbraten, a first person shooter.

Those are just some of my favourites.

There are tons more really helpful programs out there but it's hard to think up a list of them on the spot. What I like to do is just search through the repositories looking for things that might interest me, download them and try them out.

PS, I'm also getting started in programming and I am using Python to do it (in fact I started using it a while ago, on Pygmalion's advice). I think it's great, the syntax is easy to pick up and there's a great community around it so lots of tutorials and help about. Khannie, I'd be interested to hear why you don't like it?

If you are going to start using Python, just be cognisant of which version you learn. Most of the 2.x series is very similar but there are some differences between Python 2.x and Python 3.x, in syntax as well as in how some basic functions work. Currently the dominant version is still 2.x (2.6 or 2.7). Py2.x is better supported for the moment; a lot of libraries haven't yet been ported to Python3. So just read up on the differences and decide which one you want to go with. The MIT course Pygmalion linked to teaches you through Python 2.5, but it's pretty easy to work with it in Python 3 as long as you remember the syntax changes.

What am I saying, the Python website explains things better than I ever could: http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python2orPython3

(PS, I'm not using Ubuntu at the moment so apologies if anything I've mentioned is not available via the Ubuntu Software Centre, but I think it should all be there.)

bnt

If you need to keep data synchronised between two locations, I can highly recommend Unison for that. It has a friendly front end, unison-gtk, though I tend to use it in scripts so that a whole backup process is automated. The nice thing about it is that it handles changes on both sides, so it's not the usual "master-slave" backup that can overwrite files if you aren't careful. There's extensive documentation here, but it's pretty easy to get started with the GUI front end.

For example, I use it to sync data between this netbook and a USB key, then when I get to university, I run it again (on Windows) to sync the data to the university systems. I always end up with the latest versions of my files, regardless of where the last edit was made. No hiccups in the two or so years I've been doing this.

Khannie

evercloserunion wrote: »

Khannie, I'd be interested to hear why you don't like it?

Maybe it's fine for a first timer, but I found that it went against the grain of basically every other language and syntax I'd learned. I found nothing intuitive about it (boolean operations, colons after if statements, end of grouping defined by indentation, etc. etc. the list was flippin' endless). Basically, I had to look everything up which frustrated the crap out of me as an experienced C++ / Java / Perl coder.

As I say though...maybe if you're a first time coder it's ok.