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You have just installed Ubuntu, logged in for the first time and don’t know what to do next? It’s understandable that the system should be configured the way that would ensure decent experience. Of course, depending on your needs you may want different software to be installed. So we would recommend you to check the following steps and list of applications in order to choose the ones which may be useful for you.

1. Enabling all the repositories

Repositories represent software archives were thousands of programs for Ubuntu are stored. Repositories make it very easy to install new software onto Ubuntu using an Internet connection. In addition to that they provide a high level of security, as each program available in the repositories is thoroughly tested and built specifically for each version of Ubuntu. Thus enabling all the repositories you ensure the access to the bigger amount of applications.

It should be mentioned that Ubuntu software repositories are organized into 4 separate components, according to the level of support offered by Ubuntu. Here is the list of those components:

• Main – Officially supported software.

• Restricted – Supported software that is not available under a completely free license.

• Universe – Community maintained software, i.e. not officially supported software.

• Multiverse – Software that is not free.

There are two ways to enable/disable repositories:

a) System > Administration > Software Sources

b) System > Administration > Synaptic >> Settings >> Repositories

Here is the window you get, which gives you the opportunity to choose the repositories you need:

As soon as you’ve done which choosing enabling/disabling of repositories (we suggest you to enable all of them), click “Close” button to save your changes. A dialog box should appear, asking whether you’d like to update the list of repositories. Select “Reload” to update the list. Make sure that you click “Reload” button, because repository information will not be updated until the “Reload” is selected.

IMPORTANT: In case you use Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) all the repositories are enabled by default, so you can skip this step.

The last thing to mention about repositories is that you can use command line instead of graphical interface to manage them. Here you get more info about this method.

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Every single user while thinking about changing operating system, in particular Windows to Ubuntu, tries to make sure that new OS will allow him/her to do everything he/she got used to, i.e. it won’t lack functionality. As you remember, we had already reviewed Microsoft Office and Instant Messaging Clients alternatives for Linux distributions, so now it’s time to check how things stand in the other aspects. In the given post we are going to find out if Ubuntu multimedia capabilities are decent enough to be compared with the ones of Windows.

It’s quite an understandable fact that each of you has favorite apps for movies, music, Internet radio and so on. Moreover it can be just one single app, which you really like, thus willing to get at least comparable alternative. Fortunately there are a lot of things to choose from, so you can easily find the one corresponding to all your needs.

Here is the full list of the most popular multimedia applications to be reviewed (in alphabetical order):

1. Amarok
2. Audacious
3. Banshee Media Player
4. Dragon Player
5. Exaile Music Player
6. Juk Player
7. Kaffeine Player
8. Listen Music Player
9. Movie Player (Totem)
10. MPlayer
11. Quod Libet
12. Rhythmbox Music Player
13. SMPlayer
14. Songbird
15. VLC Media Player

As you understand the amount of programs deserving attention is much bigger, so if you encountered a nice app that wasn’t included in the list, please let us know.

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