The Perfect Desktop – Ubuntu Studio 9.10

This tutorial shows how you can set up an Ubuntu Studio 9.10 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

To fully replace a Windows desktop, I want the Ubuntu Studio desktop to have the following software installed:

Graphics:

• The GIMP – free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop
• F-Spot – full-featured personal photo management application for the GNOME desktop
• Google Picasa – application for organizing and editing digital photos

Internet:

• Firefox
• Opera
• Flash Player 10
• FileZilla – multithreaded FTP client
• Thunderbird – email and news client
• Evolution – combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions
• aMule – P2P file sharing application
• Transmission BitTorrent Client – Bittorrent client
• Azureus/Vuze – Java Bittorrent client
• Empathy IM Client – multi-platform instant messaging client
• Skype
• Google Earth
• Xchat IRC – IRC client

Office:

• OpenOffice Writer – replacement for Microsoft Word
• OpenOffice Calc – replacement for Microsoft Excel
• Adobe Reader
• GnuCash – double-entry book-keeping personal finance system, similar to Quicken
• Scribus – open source desktop publishing (DTP) application

Sound & Video:

• Amarok – audio player
• Audacity – free, open source, cross platform digital audio editor
• Banshee – audio player, can encode/decode various formats and synchronize music with Apple iPods
• MPlayer – media player (video/audio), supports WMA
• Rhythmbox Music Player – audio player, similar to Apple’s iTunes, with support for iPods
• gtkPod – software similar to Apple’s iTunes, supports iPod, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod photo, and iPod mini
• XMMS – audio player similar to Winamp
• dvd::rip – full featured DVD copy program
• Kino – free digital video editor
• Sound Juicer CD Extractor – CD ripping tool, supports various audio codecs
• VLC Media Player – media player (video/audio)
• Helix Player – media player, similar to the Real Player
• Totem – media player (video/audio)
• Xine – media player, supports various formats; can play DVDs
• Brasero – CD/DVD burning program
• K3B – CD/DVD burning program
• Multimedia Codecs

Programming:

• KompoZer – WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Macromedia Dreamweaver, but not as feature-rich (yet)
• Bluefish – text editor, suitable for many programming and markup languages
• Quanta Plus – web development environment, including a WYSIWYG editor

Other:

• VirtualBox OSE– lets you run your old Windows desktop as a virtual machine under your Linux desktop, so you don’t have to entirely abandon Windows
• TrueType fonts
• Java
• Read-/Write support for NTFS partitions

Lots of our desired applications are available in the Ubuntu repositories, and some of these applications have been contributed by the Ubuntu community.