Essential Software for the average Joe

[sdansmith]

Hey everyone, I'm about to make a military deployment, and I've essentially left the Windows/Mac world (except that my office still uses Microsoft products). Anyway, I've turned my old MacBook Pro into an Ubuntu machine, and I've got the following now:

Opera browser
Chromium browser
Firefox browser
Libre Office 5

I also have a few games, like Steam (so whatever I own that I can port to Linux).

Since I'll be gone for several months, do you recommend any particular software to make my time away more productive/enjoyable? What movie player do you prefer? Music player? Any writing software (screenplays or research papers)? Any very basic and beginning programming software. I use my laptop mostly to research and write, but I'm interested in whatever people are using.

Thanks in advance,
Dan
http://examinescience.wordpress.com

[ian-weisser]

Basic and beginning programming: Python3, already included with Ubuntu Desktop. Grab the free pdf version of the book to learn how to use it.

[SeijiSensei]

Video player: SMPlayer with the mpv engine. Install both from the repositories, then in SMPlayer navigate to Options > Preferences > General and select "mpv" from the "engine" drop-down list.

I use LibreOffice Writer for word processing. Screenplays have unique formats though. There are a couple of reviews of the alternatives available from a Google search.

I use Kubuntu, so most of my software comes from the KDE side of the world. I use Clementine for an audio player.

[shantiq]

Gimp to edit photos and also draw

[Perfect Storm]

Mostly Steam, but I use gimp and inkscape for fun. I usually use the default applications on elementary OS except the browser. I use chrome for that job.

Oh the terminal I like to use as well

[Bucky Ball]

Re. screenwriting; how's about this and these? The latter list is a couple of years old so you may have to dig around and see what's still alive and useful.

[1clue]

Gimp is like photoshop only free and not so easy-to-use. If you want to edit an existing photo or other image this is the thing.
Inkscape is a nice vector drawing app I use any time I need to share an idea in drawing form. Not a cad program, more like adobe illustrator if you ever saw that.

Programming is a really big topic.
Best command-line programming editor: vim or emacs.

Best gui programming editor: sublime text 3. Not free, but demo mode only pops up a dialog every so often. License is one license per human, unlimited computers. Mac, windows, linux. You get a really nice basic editor with no extras and install plugins for extra language support or features. There are tons of plugins.

Best IDE: intellij. Not free, not cheap. Very worth it if you program professionally. Next is some variant of eclipse, get the variant already set up for whatever langages you're interested in.

[1clue]

Documentation: markdown or some variant of it. This is a wiki-style markup language, not an app. Easy to learn, low-tech and keeps your styles consistent throughout the document. Use sublime-text-3 with markdown features added. Also look at multimarkdown, github-flavored markdown and search for other variants.

I've never done markdown except with sublime and vim. I'm sure other programming editors do nicely too.


That's another thing: find a programming editor that really fits you well and learn every feature. Even if you never get serious about programming they come in really handy

[yoshii]

VLC media player saves a lot of headaches for video playback.
PhotoFiltre runs well if you get into the Wine stuff.
Peace and good luck.

[Irihapeti]

Zim-wiki for note-taking. I'd be lost without it.