A must have list of softwares on Ubuntu

A computer is only as good as the programs it has. So here is my collection of programs for anyone out there looking for some power packed softwares. Recently I switched from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 16.04, and I realised I need to have a list of softwares that I need to check are there on my system or not. I will put here a curated list of all my top must-have software for any developer on Linux systems (Ubuntu in particular).

• GNOME3 – A productive desktop environment – For me this is going to be GNOME. Although many won’t agree to this, but after some customisation, it can become the best environment out there. The newer versions of Ubuntu (from 18.04 on wards) will already feature Gnome 3 as default instead of the Unity desktop, so why not try it out right away ? (Also KDE is a good alternative to the Unity shell, if you want to avoid Gnome)
  My favourite extensions on GNOME 3
  • Suspend Button
  • Applications Menu
  • Clipboard Indicator (You can turn off the annoying copy notifications from tweak tool)
  • Workspace Indicator
  • Android Tools (Great if you work with android frequently)
  • Coverflow Alt-Tab
  • Dropdown Terminal
  • Easy Screen Cast (Amazingly productive if you are into making screen-casts)
  • Places Menu
• Cairo Dock – After installing gnome 3, cairo dock is the best way to deal with application accessibility. It has lots of customisation features that are really helpful. My personal favourites are terminal and stack.
• Wine – The next best thing on ubuntu is probably power of emulating windows software. Personally, wine is most useful for me for executing software like IDA Pro etc, but it can be anything. Must have if you play CTF’s and need to reverse a binary made for windows.
• Play on Linux – This is for you if you felt configuring wine is a difficult task. Play on Linux has ready-made and tested configurations for thousands of applications and games as well, all you need to do is supply your installer and the application name. I use it for Photoshop and MS Office on my Ubuntu.
• Okular – If you are an ebook fan and keep epub and related formats with you, Okular is decent viewer for opening them.
• VLC – The cross platform Video player, also works the best on Ubuntu.
• Synaptic Package Manager – The best gui alternative to apt-get, it can make package management a lot easier.
• Sublime text – You might be a vim fan, but sublime is great GUI text editor, and it works well with almost all formats. Another good alternative as text editor is Atom, it is also a light and powerful editor.
• Code::Blocks – This is an IDE for c/c++ projects, mind you, this is not very useful for single file programs, best used for projects with large codes. You are better off using sublime text for single file programs.
  NOTE: In case you install code-blocks and cannot seem to make the auto-indent function properly, you are missing the code-blocks contrib package most likely, just type in the following in a terminal and it will be fixed (or use synaptic):

  sudo apt-get install codeblocks-contrib

• GIMP – Free alternative to photoshop, for image editing.
• Simple Scan – A very minimal interface for scanning, in case you are intimidated by the xsane scanning application.
• TexMaker – In case you know latex, here is an excellent gui for your tex files, my choice for CV/Resume’s. (Note: you might have to install the latex packages you wish to use separately). A WYSIWYG alternative is LyX.
• Bless Hex Editor – This is a nice GUI alternative to objdump and other commands and probably a nice way to edit files in their hex format.
• Blender – If you work with 3D animation and stuff, probably you won’t want to miss out on this one.
• OpenShot – Free video editor, and yes you can make your own animated titles (need blender for this though). Although the predefined library is not very vast, but it still offers a wide variety to pick from. Also has powerful features like changing speed etc.
• Audacity – Free to use audio editor, good for quick audio editing tasks.

All the above were some of the softwares covering most domains in my view that one would normally require. There are all the other mainstream softwares that are available on Ubuntu like Skype, TeamViewer, Google Chrome. Apart from these, every development tool/IDE is available on Ubuntu – IntelliJ, NetBeans, Eclipse etc etc and those that aren’t, simply use wine for them.

For Game Developers out there, Unity 3D has a beta version for linux, refer to the forum here. You can also use play on linux to use Unity.

Also in case you are an owner of a laptop with a GPU, you will need to install the appropriate GPU drivers before you can use that GPU on ubuntu, for NVIDIA, follow the steps in their official website (Choose show all operating systems and then select your version).
Any suggestions/additions in this list are absolutely welcome, and as a final note, this list is not an absolute line, just my selection of softwares.

 

Some hacks in case you are annoyed:

• In case you cannot find a way to prevent your airplane mode from turning on and disabling your wifi (if that happens), you can open a new terminal and enter the following commands :

  sudo sh -c 'printf "#!/bin/sh\n/usr/bin/setkeycodes e057 240 e058 240\n" > /etc/init.d/hp-keycodes'
  sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/hp-keycodes
  sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/hp-keycodes /etc/rc2.d/S01hp-keycodes

  Credits: Ask Ubuntu Link (Note that the answer works for 16.04 as well)