Finding the Right Program

The wealth of software offered on an Ubuntu system is enormous, so finding the right tool for the right job can be difficult at times. The following table may help you with this. It shows programs which are installed on Xubuntu by default, some which are recommended to be added by you, and other programs available in the software archives, grouped by tasks. Please note that you may have to enable restricted repositories to install some of the listed programs.

Task Installed Program Also available
Webbrowser Firefox Epiphany (Gnome), Konqueror (KDE), Dillo
Email Client Thunderbird Sylpheed-Claws
File Manager Thunar Nautilus (Gnome), Konqueror (KDE), Xffm (old Xfce Filemanager), ROX-Filer
Text Editor Mousepad Gedit (Gnome), Kate (KDE), Gvim, XEmacs, Nedit, Nano
Word Processing Abiword OpenOffice, KOffice (KDE), LaTeX
Spreadsheet Calculation Gnumeric-gtk OpenOffice, KOffice (KDE)
Multimedia Playback (Audio/Video) Xfmedia XMMS, Beep Media Player, Xine, Mplayer, Totem (Gnome), Rhythmbox (Gnome)
Image Manipulation Gimp Krita (KDE, part of KOffice)
Picture Browsing GQview gThumbview (Gnome), KView (KDE)
Chat / Instant Messanger Gaim XChat
PDF Viewer Evince-gtk Acroread
Calendar Orage  
Package Management Synaptic  
Software Telephone   Ekiga (Gnome)
Archiving Tool Xarchiver, Thunar Archive Plugin  
CD/DVD Burning Xfburn GnomeBaker (Gnome), K3b (KDE)
FTP Client   Nautilus (Gnome), Konqueror (KDE)
Printer Administration CUPS Web Administration Gnome Cups Manager (Gnome)
P2P   aMule
Vector Graphics   Inkscape
Desktop Publishing (DTP)   Scribus