[xubuntu-users] Useful Desktop Applications to Add to Xubuntu

[David Collins]

Xubuntu users,

I have been using Xubuntu in my home for a bit more than a year.  I now have Xubuntu on all  our PCs - my own and my 2 teenage daughter's PCs.  I chose the XFCE interface over GNOME and KDE for the usual reasons - it is simple and fast and will run nicely on any old PC or mini-laptop (eg. the Eee PC) when I eventually get to buy one.  My thinking is that if I get familar with Xubuntu, I can use it everywhere, and not have to bother with Kubuntu or Ubuntu.

By design, though, the default Xubuntu install does not give you a fully-functioning desktop PC.  You need to install a number of applications, browser plugins and codecs.  We have tested lots of applications to see which is the most suitable paint
 program, word processor, iPod manager, etc. for us.  I thought it might be useful to anyone new to Xubuntu to document the applications that we install.  Note that I have scripted the install process as much as possible so that I don't have to re-do this manually on 3 PCs when I do a fresh install of the next version of Xubuntu.

 GStreamer packages (codecs for different format video files) ..
gstreamer0.10-alsa
gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
gstreamer0.10-gnomevfs
gstreamer0.10-plugins-base
gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad

 More things for Web-browsing ..

REMOVE totem

flashplugin-nonfree

 vlc

mozilla-plugin-vlc

Java run-time ..

sun-java6-bin

sun-java6-jre

sun-java6-plugin



 Essential Simple GUI Program for looking at Hardware ..
gnome-device-manager

 Xfce4 utilities (these might all be installed by default in hardy?) ..
xfce4-mixer
xfce4-mixer-alsa
xfce4-taskmanager
xfce4-cpugraph-plugin
xfce4-datetime-plugin
xfce4-netload-plugin
xfce4-systemload-plugin
xfce4-taskmanager
You then need to add these to the top panel and configure.  Once you have configured these manually, you can copy all the config files in ~/.config/xfce4/panel/ to other PCs.

Ksnapshot - much more flexible than xfce4-screenshooter-plugin ..
ksnapshot
Add a launcher for this in the top panel, also.

 a2ps - needed for Mousepad to print ..
a2ps

Load apps faster (?) ..
preload

 OpenOffice ..
openoffice.org-calc
openoffice.org-common
openoffice.org-core
openoffice.org-draw
openoffice.org-hyphenation
openoffice.org-impress
openoffice.org-style-human
openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-au
openoffice.org-writer
myspell-en-au

 kolourpaint, gthumb and Gimp help files ..
kolourpaint - VERY similar to MS Paint - basic and easy to use
gthumb - Great little program for photos - brightening, cropping, removing red eye, etc.
gimp-help-en - With GIMP you need all the help you can get!
GIMP is a very scary program - but it is very good once you get used to it.  The most important thing to understand is that it creates LAYERS.  Make sure that you have the 'Layers Dialog' open so that you can see what layer is active - else you will get totally confused.  I bought a book 'Beginning GIMP' by Akkana Peck - and this explained everything - heaps cheaper than buying a software license for PhotoShop.

Add a File Search in Thunar (good if this was done in the Xubuntu install) ...
gnome-utils
Now in Thunar, click Edit/Configure Custom Actions and add an item with the command -
gnome-search-tool --path=%f
Under the 'Appearance Conditions' tab, type * for 'File Pattern' and tick 'Directories'

 Music Management ..

CD Player (this simple program will copy the sound tracks off an audio CD into .ogg files.  You can then use GTKPod to translate these to .MP3s and copy to an iPod.) ..  
goobox

And GTKPod (with packages that probably should be in the dependency list?)  ..
gtkpod
  mp3gain
  lame
  flac
  vorbis-tools
We were ONLY using Banshee for a while, but then it didn't work with an iPod shuffle that we bought.  GTKPod is more basic but seems to work more reliably with the hardware.  GTKPod has less dependent packages, so it might be best to try GTKPod, and then only use Banshee if you want something fancier.

Banshee ..
banshee-1
podsleuth - required for iPod


 For transferring photos from Cameras onto your PC ..
gtkam

Microsoft fonts ...
msttcorefonts

I use Samba for a shared folder area on our main PC, so we install the following on all PCs ..
smbfs
smbclient
pyneighborhood

Initially we installed VirtualBox for running a Windows XP session in.  It runs very nicely and is very user-friendly. Although I still have it installed on a couple of PCs, we don't actually use it anymore - or very rarely.

I hope this is useful to some of you.

Regards,
David Collins




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