Hello everyone! I am new to Ubuntu and would like some tips!

[Sam_Osman]

Hello everyone,

I recently decided to dual boot Linux on my laptop that was primarily running Win 8.1. I am beginning to think that this was the best decision that I have made all week!

Anyhow, I was just wondering which apps you guys would recommend installing and/or would consider essential. So far I have done the apt-get update/upgrade and I installed g++ and set up the thunderbird e-mail service.

What apps do you think are important and which apps do you use the most often? I am a mathematics student at a 2 year community college and I intend to transfer to a 4 year university to study computer engineering (and computer science).

I want to learn more about what else a Linux system can do; A friend of mine once explained to me that a Linux machine can do pretty much anything you can think of because it does not have the same limitations as a Windows based computer. I don't know if that is 100% true but I believe it .

I plan on reading more about how to use the Linux shell (I saw the sticky thread) and I'll be sure to lurk around the forums to see what else is out there.

Thank you for reading, and I am super excited to join your awesome community!

- Sam

p.s. I plan on using Ubuntu as a Windows replacement. I was planning on using Wine to re-install my video games such as Starcraft and Dota 2, as well as to install MS Office 2013.

Edit(s): This post has been trimmed to better comply with the rules of the forum. Please delete the 2 previous threads that were closed.

[whitesmith]

Some versions of MS Office--the latest Gold version of Word that I see supported is 2010--work under Wine (check winehq.org). Games are always problematic. Some work under Wine, many others don't. Knowing what I now do I would not have dual booted when I joined the forum in 2008. I should have just installed 100% Ubuntu and depended on VirtualBox for Windows support. This is truly the best of both worlds because the running OSes are pure Ubuntu and (almost) pure Windows. Mull my experience over and see if it makes sense to you. Of course, the longer you wait, the more difficult this approach will be without a significant reinvestment of time. Regards.

[edit] VirtualBox works best if a fair amount of RAM can be allocated to it on the fly. I have 32 GB in my box. Before jumping on the VirtualVox approach I would post a question under Virtualization and get the opinion of an expert. I would hate to recommend one approach only to have it blow up in your face because you lack the resources to implement it.

[Sam_Osman]

That makes sense. Should I be concerned about lag and errors when running those high-resouce demanding games via Virtual Box on an Ubuntu system? Ubuntu was lagging when I did the opposite (used Ubuntu vbox on Win 8.1 system) but Ubuntu is running super-fast now when I use it as the main OS. I will definitely check winehq.org to see what is supported. Thank you for that. I am guessing Office 2010 might work and I still have my academic license for it. And just to clarify, you are saying that Ubuntu + vbox windows is much better than dual booting?

Edit: I suppose I should have mentioned that I am on an ASUS laptop with icore 7 2.4 ghz processor, 8 gigs RAM, nvidia 840M with 2gb ram, and 750 gb hdd @ 5400 RPM (I forgot the exact RPM number but its the 5xxx one).

[Lars Noodén]

What apps do you think are important and which apps do you use the most often?[/B] I am a mathematics student at a 2 year community college and I intend to transfer to a 4 year university to study computer engineering (and computer science).

The typesetting tool TeX would be useful to know in that context, last I checked. It's how math and comp sci is written.

[Sam_Osman]

The typesetting tool TeX would be useful to know in that context, last I checked. It's how math and comp sci is written.

Good call! I definitely need that! I still need to learn how to use it. Is there a name of a specific app you would recommend downloading to edit and compile TeX documents? (I assume compile is the right word, and I do not know if TeX is itself the name of an editor. In the past my peers recommend using a LaTeX editor but I was unable to get it working at the time).

--Sam

[whitesmith]

#Sam_Osman: I think your post and an edit to mine crossed. Please read the EDIT to that post, since it brings up an important point. Regards.

[Sam_Osman]

VirtualBox works best if a fair amount of RAM can be allocated to it on the fly. I have 32 GB in my box. Before jumping on the VirtualVox approach I would post a question under Virtualization and get the opinion of an expert. I would hate to recommend one approach only to have it blow up in your face because you lack the resources to implement it.

Wow that is a lot of RAM you have there! I will look into posting under virtualization, but before that I will simply try installing vbox + win 7 + dota 2 to see how it runs. From my experience with vbox, this should work well (in theory). I think a vm of windows 8.1 with at least 4 gb RAM would also run pretty well. I will give it a try and report back when I have time in a few days!

Thanks for letting me know you editted because I did not see that earlier.

-- Sam

[Impavidus]

Good call! I definitely need that! I still need to learn how to use it. Is there a name of a specific app you would recommend downloading to edit and compile TeX documents? (I assume compile is the right word, and I do not know if TeX is itself the name of an editor. In the past my peers recommend using a LaTeX editor but I was unable to get it working at the time).

--Sam

Just install texlive from the software centre. It will get you the command line tools and a decent set of LaTeX packages. If you want more, search the software centre. Or instead of the software centre, use synaptic, which is a far more powerful interface to the Ubuntu repositories (and also recommended).

[Sam_Osman]

Thanks, Impavidus. I did "sudo apt-get install texlive && sudo apt-get install synaptic" in the shell. Does texlive also have an editor? or do I just write the files in gedit and then compile with texlive?

Many thanks!

--Sam

[Impavidus]

It does not come with an editor. I write my .tex files in vim, but you can use any text editor you like (gedit, nano, emacs, ...). On the command line you can call

#To create a .dvi file
latex file.tex
#Or a .pdf file
pdflatex file.tex

or one of the other associated tools. But if you're a mathemathics student you should be able to find people who are already experienced LaTeX users.

But editors (that is, front ends) with everything integrated are available. You can get TeXworks from the repositories, maybe some others. I don't know them. I prefer the command line stuff.