Installations

I am going to by a new computer next week (switching form mac to thinkpad). I am thinking of installing ubuntu and will us that primarily but will leave windows 7 on the computer. I am thinking of all the programs I will need to buy/install. I was hoping you guys could help me build a list of programs you would install on a new computer.

Note: I am a student studying applied/computation mathematics.

I'll start my list:

Matlab
Maple
Mathematica
Open Office
Kile

What else?

 

you might want to swap LibreOffice for OpenOffice.

 

I haven't heard of LibreOffice (I'm not that into the know), why do you prefer that?

 

Some believe The Document Foundation will better improve the suite....here's a discussion of it:

LibreOffice vs OpenOffice.org (View topic) • OpenOffice.org Community Forum

 

Open office 3.2 is pretty robust. I use it along side my windows users who are using 2003, 2007 and 2010. No issues so far and it comes standard with ubuntu. Dont know other distros well enough to know if it comes with them but Im pretty sure desktop versions would.

Im interested in reading about the libreoffice debate though. What makes you like that better Zoid?

 

I have LibreOffice in SL6 right now, but it really doesn't matter to me to tell the truth

 

I switched to libreoffice as soon as it was in the Debian repo, and since then it's replaced OOo as the default. It seems to load faster for me, but the differences aren't really major at this point. I'd use it just to stay away from Oracle tbh.

 

Are you sure that Ubuntu uses OpenOffice?
Until Squeeze Debian used Go-OO (which is technically the predecessor of LibreOffice) but relabeled it OpenOffice because of the name recognition. Wheezy uses LibreOffice for some days now.

 

Ahh. I have no issues with OO 3.2, works great along side my windows slaves...err I mean end users.

Ill have to try libreoffice to compare load times. OO seems to run pretty decent on my x200s though. Why stay away from oracle? If you dont mind me asking.

Yeah pretty sure. 10.04 and 10.10 both shipped with OO. I dont remember what release it was for 10.04, but 10.10 came with 3.2 which works very well. Kinda surpised as being a debian distro I would think they would follow suit, but then again as we have discussed ubuntu is the windows of the linux world.

I think if I get an SSD Im going to tryout debian for familiarity and to try something new. Im messing with centos now and I must say its not that bad even though I prefer debian>redhat style distros. I like the GUI setup and some of the styling, but the locations of alot of things are weird to me. I guess time will tell if I stick with a tried and true debian code or hop the fence to red hat. (Im pretty sure the former is what will happen )

 

Personal pretensions of mine involving the Sun acquisition and their attitude in general. If you don't have an opinion about Oracle, I'm not going to try to give you one. I'm not going down this rabbit hole... I didn't want to ignore you though.

 

Well Im always willing to travel down a rabbit hole through PMs if youre feeling inclined to.

 

Ubuntu used Go-OO as well.

So basically, you've been using the progenitor of LibreOffice.

 

Yeah, it also accepts packages that openoffice under sun/Oracle wouldn't.

Ubuntu ships with Go-OO. Same for all the releases.

Also, the reason to stay away from Oracle is that the aren't very community oriented(look what happened with opensolaris).