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After a couple of months using Ubuntu Linux as my primary desktop O.S. I've found a few Linux apps I simply can't do without. In this brief blog entry, you can find Czar's top recommend Ubuntu/Linux packages worth installing and using.

Fluxbox

In Unix (and others including GNU/Linux) computing, Fluxbox is a window manager for the X Window System based on Blackbox 0.61.1. It aims to be lightweight and highly customizable, with only minimal support for graphical icons, and only basic interface style capabilities. http://fluxbox.org/

Beep Media Player

The Beep Media Player (BMP) is a free audio player, based on the XMMS multimedia player. The BMP is mainly a port of XMMS to [[GTK+|GTK+ 2]] and as such, integrates better with the look and feel of more recent versions of the GNOME desktop environment. Like XMMS, BMP looks like Winamp and even supports Winamp (and XMMS) skins. http://beep-media-player.org/site/BMPx_Homepage

Gedit

gedit is an open-source, UTF-8 compatible text editor for the GNOME desktop environment. It is designed to have a clean, simple interface inspired by the ideals of the GNOME project. http://www.gnome.org/projects/gedit/

Gnome Terminal

GNOME terminal, also identified as gnome-terminal, is a terminal emulator written by Havoc Pennington and others. It is very similar to the xterm terminal emulator, and has a nearly identical feature set. Some of the more important features of the two include their support for coloured text (the output of a command such as ls shows the use of this feature well), and support for mouse events within the window. http://directory.fsf.org/gnome-terminal.html

Nautilus

Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the image of a nautilus shell to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards. Nautilus not only supports browsing local filesystems, it also provides access to FTP sites, Windows SMB shares, WebDAV servers and SFTP servers via GNOME VFS. http://www.gnome.org/projects/nautilus/

OpenOffice.org Writer

Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word, with a roughly equivalent range of features. It provides a number of features not present in Word, including being able to export to the PDF format natively. http://www.openoffice.org/product2/writer.html

OpenOffice.org Calc

Calc is a spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing based on the layout of the user's data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as PDF files. http://sc.openoffice.org/

Opera

Opera is an Internet suite which handles common internet-related tasks, including visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, and online chat. In addition to the web browser, the other main component in the desktop versions of the Opera suite is the Opera Mail client, previously known as M2. Opera Mail supports regular POP and SMTP mail as well as IMAP. It also has an Address book. Opera Mail also features a newsreader and a newsfeed reader for RSS and Atom, as well as an IRC client for online chat. The forthcoming Opera 9 will also feature widgets as well as further BitTorrent functionality. http://www.opera.com/

Streamtuner

streamtuner is a streaming media directory browser. Through the use of a C/Python plugin system, it offers a [[GTK+]] 2.0 interface to Internet radio directories. streamtuner does not actually play any files, it downloads list of online radio streams then tells the unix player (users option) to play the selected stream. streamtuner offers hundreds of thousands of music resources in a more common interface. http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner/

Thunderbird

An e-mail client program for Windows, Mac, Linux, OS/2 and Solaris from the Mozilla Project. It provides unique features including a Saved Search feature that provides a virtual mailbox based on specific search criteria. For example, all mail from a particular person could be in a Saved Search folder although the physical messages are stored in several other mailboxes. http://www.mozilla.org

VMPlayer

VMware Player lets you evaluate new or pre-release software contained in virtual machines, without any installation or configuration hassles. You can also share existing virtual machines with colleagues or friends—just use VMware Player to run any virtual machine. http://www.vmware.com/products/player/