Munckfish.net

Here’s a list of some of my favourite or most relied-upon applications on Ubuntu. It’s not exhaustive but it’s a start. It doesn’t include extras like multi-media codecs or any of the sort of things you can get easily with something like EasyUbuntu. The lists arranged by purpose and are ordered alphabetically not by preference. Some things are not available in the Ubuntu repositories and are marked as such.

Desktop

• deskbar-applet
• gnome-keyring-manager
• kde-style-polymer (from external source - makes QT apps look ok on gnome, see my post here)
• MSTCoreFonts
• nautilus-open-terminal
• nautilus-scripts:
  • nautilus-script-collection-svn (subversion shortcuts)
  • nautilus-script-manager
• skype (only beta 1.3 works, needs kde-style-polymer or looks ugly, get it from www.skype.com)
• Tomboy (desktop notes tool)
• xnest (for nested X logins)

Development

• apache2
• emacs-snapshot-gtk (emacs for the gnome desktop)
• JEdit (from external jedit repo http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/jedit)
• java:
  • ant
  • sun-java5-*
• meld (visual/graphical diff tool)
• mysql:
  • mysql-server
  • mysql-client
  • mysql-admin (note a wrapper script is needed as a bug workaround on this, can’t remember the bug link just now)
  • mysql-query
• .Net (just listing the basic dev packages here)
  • mono-devel
  • monodoc-manual
• php5:
  • php5 (basic setup for use with apache)
  • php5-* (choose whatever extra modules you need)
  • php5-cli (command line version)
• python
• ruby
  • ruby
  • irb
  • lib*-ruby (pickup any of the extra packages you need)
  • ri
  • rdoc
  • rails
• subversion
• vim-gnome (gvim)
• vmware-server

Networking

• Avahi (zeroconf/bonjour)
  • avahi-daemon
  • avahi-utils
  • libapache2-mod-dnssd (to auto-advertise apache2 sites available on your machine)
  • service-discovery-applet
  • libnss-mdns
• ethereal
• firestarter (basic firewall manager)
• gftp (sftp and ftp client)
• NetworkManager
• rdesktop (Remote Desktop and Terminal Services Client)

Sound & Multimedia

• banshee music player
• f-spot photomanager
• gnomebaker (cd-burner)
• gxine (media player)

I used to use FileZilla on Windows before I migrated to Ubuntu Linux. Found out today that the FileZilla team are working on a port to Linux. Alpha snapshots are available here:

http://filezilla-project.org/nightly.php.

FileZilla is a great FTP tool, user friendly and very capable. It appears that the team are using the cross-platform wxWidgets GUI toolkit for the UI, it uses GTK+ on linux so FileZilla already looks good on the Ubuntu (Gnome) desktop. I look forward to the official release of version 3 on linux. Here’s a screen shot.

Noticed today that Skype have release a beta version of their client for Linux. From the discussion on the Ubuntu forum it seems that it runs just fine out of the box for people with a clean Ubuntu Dapper install. Those that applied the workaround for the previous version have to revert those changes to get it up and running. I’ve installed it on my machine and with a little tweaking of the sound/mic/capture settings it seems to be working great!