// Digital solutions with a Christian Foundation Site by Josh McClanahan
DigitalValdosta.com on Twitter.comA few years ago I switched from using Microsoft Windows to using only Linux because of all of the issue that only reside on Windows. But since most people stay using what they are comfortable with I have made a list of commonly used and needed programs and plugins for both operating systems.
While Ubuntu comes with comonly used software already, I figured I would make it easier to get people up and running an environment that is comfortable and has all of the features they will require day to day. I list some programs and plugins that are of interest to me and possibly to you. This list requires that you be on Ubuntu and are running Firefox web browser for it to work. If you have a default install of Ubuntu then you should be ready.
Click the orange arrow to see the Install link and to read more about the package.
Ubuntu Restricted Extras
Installing this package will pull in support for MP3 playback and decoding, support for various other audio formats (GStreamer plugins), Microsoft fonts, Java runtime environment, Flash plugin, LAME (to create compressed audio files), and DVD playback.
WINE
Wine lets you run Windows software on other operating systems. With Wine, you can install and run these applications just like you would in Windows.
Wine is still under active development. Not every program works yet, however there are already several million people using Wine to run their software.
You can find a similar replacement to most programs that you run on Windows in Ubuntu's software repository by running Add/Remove Programs in your menu.
Check Gmail
CheckGmail is a system tray application that checks a Gmail account for new mail. When new mail is present the tray icon changes, an optional animated popup is displayed and a tooltip displays the number and details of new messages. Each message can be opened directly in a browser window, and many common Gmail operations (marking as read, archiving, deleting or reporting as spam) can be carried out on messages directly within CheckGmail, without the need to use the Gmail web interface.
Adobe Reader
CheckGmail is a system tray application that checks a Gmail account for new mail. When new mail is present the tray icon changes, an optional animated popup is displayed and a tooltip displays the number and details of new messages. Each message can be opened directly in a browser window, and many common Gmail operations (marking as read, archiving, deleting or reporting as spam) can be carried out on messages directly within CheckGmail, without the need to use the Gmail web interface.
Frozen Bubble
Frozen-Bubble is a clone of the popular "Puzzle Bobble" game, in which you attempt to shoot bubbles into groups of the same color to cause them to pop. It features 100 single-player levels, a two-player mode, music and striking graphics.
To install the following section of packages please run the following command in the terminal program located in Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal. You can highlight and copy & paste it into the Terminal. Also be sure that your system is up to date. This command is for Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. You can check to see if this is what you have in System >> About Ubuntu.
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/jaunty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring apturl && sudo apt-get update
Google Earth – Google Earth : Explore, Search and Discover
Win32 Codecs – nonfree media playback (wma, realplayer, quicktime)
Skype – VOIP with Skype
ffmpeg – Multimedia player, server and encoder (mp3,mp4,h264,amr support)
I am not a big supporter of Microsoft Windows due to the bugginess of it and the fact that it is obviously extremely easy to fill it with viruses and other things. But I know some people don't feel comfortable with changing from what they are used to. So I have created a list. This is list is a list of software that is available on Windows that I have used and had good results from. Also I am making the links to a very trusted site, Download.com, which is part of CNET.com.
List coming soon. For now look on Download.com to download software safely.
