Linux (Ubuntu) Compatiable Software

I'm getting my notebook sometime soon and am doing some research. Where can I find Ubuntu compatiable software. I've made a list of the type of programs I use often, I've found a few but there are still some blanks.

OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (Really excited! First time but it looks like it will work great for me)
Internet: Firefox
Photo Edit: GIMP
Office: OpenOffice
Photo View: ? (Windows Gallery on my HP Vista)
DVD: ? (Windows Media Player)
Music: ?
Calender: (I heard Sunbird, but I'm not sure)
Email: Thunderbird 2 (hope it can take my hotmail account)
Data Manager: ? (I need something really good, I keep herd records and OpenOffice Data doesn't cut it)
Finances: ? (again running a farm, needs to be advanced, I'm used to SimplyAccounting 2009)
Weather: I've only seen it on Macs but if they have something for Linux, please let me know.
Others: (What's the Notebook equal?)

Any help is great. I like the programs I've found so far. Thanks!

 

For Windows Gallery, there is F-Spot Photo Manager. For playing DVDs, Ubuntu's Totem Movie Player should be sufficient if you install the proprietary codecs.

For music, you have Rhythmbox and Banshee, both are excellent. You will have a good time with music management in linux, I think. I'm actually still looking for Windows applications that will equal those two, and so far no luck.

Your only problems might be the Database and Finances applications you need. I don't know of any open-source applications to rival the professional software available to Windows. There is something called CrossOver Office that might allow you to run those applications in Ubuntu, but it's not free and it doesn't work for everything. I use CrossOver to good effect personally, but YMMV.

Good luck, and enjoy the adventure! There are many helpful people in this forum. I don't use Ubuntu, but most others do. Just keep asking.

 

Use the search function of Add/Remove Programs. It's an intuitive and powerful way to find available programs for any given job. There is a built-in photo viewer, there are a number of DVD viewing programs available, probably something pre-packaged. For weather, I think there may be some panel applet(s) available, and I'm sure there are others here that could give suggestions, or you could search for "weather".

Cheers...

 

Yeah, pixelot raises a good point here. Do not go download and install the programs yourself. Use Ubuntu's built-in Add/Remove Programs instead. It's like a search engine for applications that you can install at the click of a button. It's very safe and very easy. Nearly all applications available to Ubuntu are available through it.

The reason is that raw installation of software in linux tends to be a daunting (and sometimes dangerous) thing, since they have to be manually compiled and integrated into the root filesystem.

 

As the others said, get your programs directly from add/remove, instead of downloading stuff, if possible. The add/remove program utility goes to the Ubuntu repositories to get the programs. If you install them from there, then uninstallation becomes easy and a clean job. As far as equivalents to the types of software you mention above; there are lots of candidates. Each person likes their own. The best way to know which one you need is to install them and try them. This is the way that I have come to find my favorites. Let me fill in some of my favorites from your list...

Web browser: Firefox and Opera
Photo Edit: GIMP
Office: Open Office. I have tried abiword, since it is lighter weight, but I always seems to have some kind of problems with it.
Photo Viewer: Gwenview
DVD: VLC(in my opinion this program handles commercial DVDs better than any other program I have used)
Music: Not sure what you mean. To play Cds, or manage your MP3 collection? RhythmBox is ok, but my all time favorite is Amarok. I like Amarok so much that I have it installed in my Gnome install, which I usually don't do since I don't want all the QT libraries coming in, but I like it the best. I tried a bunch of them; songbird, audacious, XMMs2 etc, non held up in my opinion.
Email: Thunderbird is nice but works best with free email servies that have pop3 access. Does hotmail have that? If not you will need to get a POP3 emulator like YPOPS! that is used for yahoo mail.
Weather: There seems to be one built in Gnome called Weather report. Just right click your panel(near where your clock is) and choose to add it. I never used it, but try it out.


Check out this software equivalent list.

 

Thanks everyone. Great tips. I've take note. I can't go into town for a another few weeks so no notebook yet. I'll play around with the OO Data on this pc. Maybe I can work around some things. Even "pro" herd records are awful to use and cost hundreds of dollars. They are not that good. I'd love something with photo recognizing software where I can just take a photo of the animal and then look it up. Just wishful thinking I guess.

Thanks again for all the help.

 

I know its about 2 days old but that what i use on my 9.04
Firefox for Internet
Thunderbird for Multiple Email accounts....
gFTP for FTP stuff
GIMP and F-Spot for Photo stuff
VLC for watching movies
open office for office stuff
DEVEDE to convert avi mkv and so on
Brasero for Disk burning
gtkPod for my ipod stuff
weather stuff you can use that intergrated thing on the top panel right click add to panel and choose the weather thing on the bottom of that list.

all programs can be loaded over Synaptic manager or add/remove programs

Other then that i dont know....its just what i use on my 9.04

 

OS: Ubuntu 9.04 (Really excited! First time but it looks like it will work great for me)
Internet: Firefox
Photo Edit: GIMP
Office: OpenOffice
Photo View: Built in Ubuntu Photo view, or Picasa if you want
DVD: MPlayer/SMPlayer or if you're the simple type then Totem
Music: Banshee, do not question this
Calender: SunBird, RainLender, Any calender applet
Email: Thunderbird
Data Manager: Google Docs? Zoho Office?
Finances: Google Docs? Zoho Office?
Weather: In the time applet in the panel, or any other dedicated applet/widget.
Others: (What's the Notebook equal?) Gedit

 

Also for photos, don't forget Picasa.

 

I like Exaile nowadays for music also, worth checking out.

 

Man, you guys are good at making me hate being stuck on the farm lol. I'm seriously considering a System76. No need to drive an hour to get to city, hunt down computer store, deal with a bunch of people and still maybe come home without a notebook. Plus the hardware is nothing to complain about. It makes my gaming friend's laptop look out dated and overpriced.


Thanks for all the program suggestions.

 

When I was first shopping for my laptop I wanted to defenetly be able to put Linux on it and in the past that was very difficult to do. But system76 was one of the recommended options at the time. I liked everything about them but they were too expensive for me. As Linux has grown and evolved, installing Linux on a laptop has gotten easier. So I decided to go with a mainstream brand where I felt I got more for my money. So far things are working great on my Thinkpad. I love it !

 

FarmersDaughter..get any laptop you want, just keep Nvidia as your GPU and Intel as your wireless and you'll be ok...for a printer, most HP's are compatible...my Canon Ip4000 printer is compatible, and my HP dEskjet 6940...but I bought them knowing this....that is key, but within those parameters, get what you want/can afford.

 

I had issue to install Ubuntu on older Averatec laptops.
I got on older emachines which had Hardware issues with the older Ubuntu versions.

The 9.04 runs great on it. Still wanted to have at least one laptop with Microsoft so I installed Dual boot on it.

My Main Laptop XPS M1210 runs Ubuntu only and i love it more every day. I think its running faster and more stable then Windows even tho i never had much issues with Windows itself.
Most of the time i hear People talking about issues with windows at work....
if you ask them what kind of Antivirus Antispyware and Firewall they use they look at you like a school bus and asking what are you talking about.....lol

I would think you should get something in your Budged area which you like. You need to work on it and so on. I think most newer Laptops should work just fine with Ubuntu.

 

I plan on heading out to a little shop out here sometime soon and see if they have OS-less notebooks. I've learned lots (from this forum) and copied down the system76 hardware list so I can look for something similar. My budget is fairly flexible, by this I mean, I'll pay for good quality, top-preformance but it has to last. The big brands like future shop and best buy (the ones with a selection of notebooks) are a good hour, usually closer to two hours away and their support is not the greatest. We went shopping there once and left without buying anything, completely fustrated.
theZiod-thanks for the tip.

 

Tu stas wilkommen

 

(French, ___, German. You had me freaked there for a minute as I do not recall mentioning that I can read/write/speak german )

 

lol.............me too......

 

ha, those 3 languages that I can speak have saved me many times. Swiss German (first), German, and English. I can also understand en petite francais and some flemish + dutch. Comes in handy.

 

hehe....I lived in Germany years ago, but have forgotten most of it....I only speak some spanish now.....it just sounded so strange I posted it....lol

 

Back on topic..........

Web: Firefox. I've tried the speedy 64bit builds, but they're pretty unstable. So I'm using the default one

Audio: Daily listening= mpd+sonata; organisation/ipod= songbird

Productivity: OpenOffice when I'm in Linux. I have to say, though, the Windows 2007 Office is really brilliant. Kudos to Microsoft for making such a great suite of softwares. There's so many compatibility problems when creating an OOo document and transfering to MS Office

Sadly, I find my self booting into Windows 7 automatically. It's just so convenient

 

My two biggest problems when I was switching to linux were finding image viewing programs and music browsers

I settled on Gmusicbrowser and gThumb Image Viewer

also for watching movies use SMPlayer. VLC is good too

 

Exaile is pretty decent for a player/browser. But do you mean a browser like Nautilus or Dolphin?

FFmpeg-svn with mplayer-svn and gnome-player-svn is one of the greatest combinations. It could play almost everything that I've thrown at it. Even propriety rmvb and rm files. It's brilliant.

I'm not too familiar with image viewers. You could try F-Spot or gimp?