New to ubuntu, what should I try? - Companion to the Mac-OSX freeware thread.

[stewtheking]

Okay, so I finally got around to putting ubuntu on my laptop today. To cut a long story short, I realised that for anything I was actually using the laptop for, there was no need to stick with windows any more. I played with a live-CD for a while this morning, to check that it would talk to my laptop properly, and that seemed to go to plan, it recognises the wireless card, and the webcam, and I am up and running.

I am sticking to the in-built firefox for my web browsing, but what else should I be looking for? What good stuff is there out for ubuntu?

 

[MCC]

Take a look at Amarok- it's by far my favorite music player, and Linux only unfortunately.

 

[trains are bad]

amarok

for photo editing, digikam. A fantastic editor-manager. Lots of great features, it replaces gimp as my everyday photo-processor. Gimp is still used for heavy-duty stuff involving layers/chopping

k3b for burning/ripping/copying dvds

dvdrip for making video files from ripped DVDs.

mplayer is the ONLY video player as far as I'm concerned.

I use pdftk on nearly a daily basis.

lyx has quite a learning curve, but it lets you do very cool things with easily typing math. It's to the point that I often type even math-heavy homework. Copy-paste is a beautiful thing.

htop is a cool system monitor.

 

[ivanrocks321]

wine a emulator for windows if you ever need it.

 

[insyte]

For music players, aside from Amarok, you can try exaile, rhythmbox and mpd.

You can also run magiciso, utorrent, EAC and Foobar under wine.

You should also check out the gimp, easytag, mplayer, vlc and openoffice

 

[xnothingpoetic]

Amarok 1.4 is better than 2.X in my opinion. Others feel differently
Be sure to try both to see which you like. (the only thing they have in common is a shared name really)

If you you use gmail, be sure to check out "checkgmail" for notifications.

And Compiz for some of the best aesthetic/productivity enhancements of any OS.

 

[krmathis]

Amarok and MPlayer
...and learn command line, if you don't already know your way around it.

 

[ZephyrSapphire]

Screw Amarok. This what you should do if you're planning to use it as a source. Install uBuntu Studio. Go with Audacious and their crossfade plugin. Link Audacious with JACK via the Alsa driver. You'll get a true gapless playback, high quality software combo for listening to music. Get Pidgin for IM-ing. It's quite decent but not my cup of tea.

And like insyte said, WINE for running Windows apps.
VLC for video playing.
Gimp for Photoshop-ing.
OpenOffice for Microsoft Office needs.

 

[stewtheking]

Thanks for the responses. I'll check 'em out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif ...and learn command line, if you don't already know your way around it.

Ah yes. I very much do NOT know my way around command line. The next big project I think...

 

[stewtheking]

Is there any advantage of mplayer over vlc or vice versa? I use vlc on my mac, and it's on the windows-side of my laptop, and am happy with it, is mplayer going to give me much more?

 

[MrSlim]

I don't think mplayer has any advantages over vlc. I use vlc almost exclusively. It has so many of the codecs already included.

If you are ripping CD's, a program that has the functionality of EAC(comparing multiple reads of a CD track before writing it out) is RubyRipper. I use it all the time.

 

[trains are bad]

vlc cowers under the shadow of the towering monster of an ultimate video-playing application that is mplayer. Mplayer can do EVERYTHING, including flipping your display upside down, remapping your surround channels, playing everything in ASCII art, and just every tweak you could possibly need, not to mention transcoding everything, dumping screenshots, changing audio and subtitle sync, infinitly customizable subtitles (I'm fond of near-transparency, and played in the black on letterboxed movies).

But yeah. If you just want to play videos, they both do that just fine.

 

[Benaiir]

I hate Amorak. It has really unattractive interface and it's a slow loader. Totem = FLAC too.

I should try Audacious o.o.... Also, anyone know any good, simple video editing programs? I can't install Cinella for some reason. I can't add the respiratory

Can Wine run windows movie maker?

 

[vagarach]

One thing about wine is the configuration, it takes a little while, but a whole lot of programs run flawlessly on it. If you're having trouble with the configuration, then definitely try Crossover Office. I always thought that paying for what amounts to a fancy UI on top of Wine is a bit much, not in the spirit, etc, BUT after using the free 7.0 release Codeweavers generously offered last year it is definitely worth the price.

mplayer is great in that it has that barebones, ultra powerful unix feel, and I used to use it because it showed only the movie, no UI controls, no menu bar, nothing, perfect for a small laptop screen.

Best way to learn command line is to build and install some program from the source--completely pointless in the majority of cases, but it will expose you to a lot of unix type concepts.

That video editing program you mentioned is Cinelerra rather than Cinella right?

 

[MusicallySilent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vagarach /img/forum/go_quote.gif One thing about wine is the configuration, it takes a little while, but a whole lot of programs run flawlessly on it. If you're having trouble with the configuration, then definitely try Crossover Office. I always thought that paying for what amounts to a fancy UI on top of Wine is a bit much, not in the spirit, etc, BUT after using the free 7.0 release Codeweavers generously offered last year it is definitely worth the price.

I would agree, I got it for OSX when they gave it away for free, and while I rarely use it the one click install and no config is very nice. I remember playing with wine in linux and i couldn't get a fair amount of things to run well