What software do I use on Ubuntu?
I hate these questions especially because of the persons from who I hear ‘em. If you are a Linux user you probably know the Windows users big existence problem: what, you don’t have that program on Linux? Sucks man, Windows is the best then. But the real problem, at least how I see it, is that not everybody is aware that not only Adobe creates graphics apps., you don’t really have to use Eset in order not to see deadly infections, you don’t need MSN to chat with your friends and in fact almost every application you use day by day has a version for Linux distributions. Yep, that’s right from my point of view: on Windows 7 I have only one app. that doesn’t have a client for Linux – Steam. But look at this: It’s official: Valve releasing Steam, Source Engine for Linux!
The list, on categories. In the graphics category only F-Spot Photo Manager but I’m not really sure why I’m keeping it. I don’t really have pictures to keep on my HDD. In internet, well I have FileZilla, Firefox 4b1, Thunderbird 3.1 with lightning 1.0b2, Pidgin for instant messaging and Remote Desktop Viewer. OpenOffice.org and Dictionary (the standard one from Ubuntu) are in the office section. Programming comes with Code::blocks, Qt Creator, QDevelop, Qt4 Assistant, Qt4 Assistant and Qt4 Designer. Sound & Video – VLC player, Movie Player, Brasero Disc Burner and of course, Sound Recorder. And that’s pretty much everything I need on my Linux distro at the moment.
Week 1/8 Post 3/5
Dude, the best video player on Linux systems is mplayer, it can open any video extension there is. It's basically a command line program, it doesn't have any user interface, which makes it very light and practical (some might say that's geeky, but you'll get used to it very fast). You can set everything (brightness, contrast, volume, subs, seeking) from the keyboard, so you don't need to exit fullscreen, only to adjust some color leves or sub delays etc. Everything works right away, while playing your video. You can also open multiple instances of the program (i don't know if that works in VLC or Movie Player, I haven't tried them). The thing that has first bothered me in Movie Player on Debian, was the lack of codecs, and when i got them right, the unsharpness of the picture. When i heard about mplayer, and installed it, it was just the right thing and fit exactly to my needs. There's also a configuration file, which you can edit and make it work your way, just like any other linux app (or most of them). You'll like it. Give me some feedback after you've played some files.
Robert