35 Cools Applications to install on the most popular Linux distribution: Ubuntu (Chapter IV).

22. RealPlayer

Realplayer is one of the most popular cross platform media player available on Windows,Linux , Mac OS and a number of other platform . RealPlayer plays popular .rm ,rmvb,.mp3 and other media formats.

To install RealPlayer first download RealPlayer10GOLD.bin file from the following website assuming you have downloaded it to your home directory .

After downloading the file go to the directory where you have downloaded the file in terminal window and type

After installation is over type


¨chmod +x RealPlayer10GOLD.bin¨

and ¨sudo ./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin¨


for installation to begin . Follow the instructions as presented to complete installation .

After installation is over you can launch Real Player from (Application -> Sound & Video -> Real Player 10 ).


Real Player for Linux


23. Lyx

Lyx is a document processor which can be used for making professional looking documents , lyx uses LaTeX to generate good looking documents .the user only has to care about the structure and content of the text, while the formatting is done by LaTeX, an advanced typesetting system.LyX is popular among technical authors and scientists for its advanced mathematical modes.

To install lyx type the following command in the terminal window : -


    sudo apt-get install lyx

After completing above step launch lyx from (Applications -> Office -> Lyx Document Processor)


Lyx Document Processor


24. XPDF & ePDFview - A lightweight PDF Viewing tool

If you have used Adobe Reader 7.0 on Linux or Windows you must have seen that it takes a lot of time to render pdf files especially if they use high resolution images or the documents have been scanned in high resolution . Besides this , it's interface is also slow. A Nice alternative to Adobe Reader 7.0 is XPDF, xpdf is one of the first pdf viewer available on the Linux Platform , it's interface may not be very user friendly being created using Motif toolkit which gives it a less friendly look but it takes a significantly less amount of memory and renders pdf files quickly .

To install XPDF type the following command in Terminal

sudo apt-get install xpdf


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Now you can launch xpdf by going into (Applications -> Graphics - > XPDF)


ePDFView : - This is also a lightweight PDF viewer that is based on poppler library ( Same library that xpdf uses for rendering of PDF files), it's interface is neat and fast and renders pdf files quickly .

To install ePDFView type the following command in Ubuntu : -

" sudo apt-get install epdfview "

after above is completed you can launch epdfview from (Applications -> Office -> ePDFViewer) .

ePDFViewer rendering some random document

25. Abiword
Abiword is a lightweight word processor created using GTK libraries , it is part of Gnome Office and have been available on Linux platform for a long time . It is crossplatform and is available on Windows , MacOS X ,BeOS and other Operating System . It's interface is similar to Microsoft Word and new users of Abiword should not have any significant difficulty in moving from Microsoft Word to AbiWord.

AbiWord is packaged with several import/export filters, including Rich Text Format, HTML, OpenDocument and LaTeX (export only). Plug-in filters are available to deal with many other formats, notably WordPerfect (wpd) documents. The native file format uses XML .

To install AbiWord

sudo apt-get install abiword


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After completing above step launch abiword by going to (Application -> Office -> Abiword Word processor) .

AbiWord is also included with many lightweight linux distributions like Xubuntu and DSL.

Abiword supports the following features:

    Speed and sze efficiency.
    Microsoft Word-like interface.
    Support for tables, footnotes, and endnotes.
    Support for tables of contents.
    Equation editing.
    Grammar checking.
    User interface and spell checking in 49 languages.

This is how AbiWord Looks

26. PCMan File Manager : -

PCMan File Manager is extremely small and Fast file manager that supports Tabbed Browsing , it may not be as feature rich as Nautilus however it does the job of file manager well . It has been created using GTK2 Libraries and it's website claims it can start in one second .

Here is the list of features (Taken from it's website ) :-

"

    Extremly fast and lightweight
    Can be started in one second on normal machine
    Tabbed browsing (Similiar to Firefox)
    Drag & Drop support
    Files can be dragged among tabs
    Load large directories in reasonable time
    File association support (Default application)
    Basic thumbnail support
    Bookmarks support
    Handles non-UTF-8 encoded filenames correctly
    Provide icon view and detailed list view
    Standard compliant (Follows FreeDesktop.org)
    Clean and user-friendly interface (GTK+ 2)

To Install PCMan File Manager download the debian package from here : - http://pcmanfm.sourceforge.net/download.html

Now You can install it graphically by double clicking it and launching the Graphical installation tool or issuing the following command in the terminal window after moving into directory where you have downloaded the debian package : -

Graphical installation of PCMan File Manager

or from Terminal window

    " dpkg -i pcman* "

Now launch PCMan File Manager by going to (Applications -> System Tools -> PCMan File Manager )

Here is a screenshot showing PCMan File Manager

27. Sylpheed - A Fast Email and News Client

Sylpheed is a Email and News client created using GTK libraries , Sylpheed is a simple, lightweight but featureful, and easy-to-use e-mail client.

Now personally i havent been able to to try Sylpheed since i dont use POP accounts anyways to install it type the following command .

    sudo apt-get install sylpheed

Default Window of Sylpheed

For more information visit Sylpheed Website : - http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/

28.Gnumeric

Gnumeric is part of Gnome Office and provides Spreadsheet capabilities , Gnumeric is a lightweight alternative to OpenOffice Spreadsheet program , besided occupying very less amout of memory it's installation files are only 2-3 Megabytes in size , based on GTK Libraries it integrates well with Gnome Desktop .Gnumeric was created and developed by Miguel de Icaza , and is now maintained by Jody goldberg .



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Gnumeric has the ability to import and export data in several file formats, including Applix, CSV, Data Interchange Format, Microsoft Excel, HTML, LaTeX, Lotus 1-2-3, MultiPlan, GNU Oleo, OpenDocument, OpenOffice.org 1.x, Plan perfect, Quattro Pro, SpreadsheetML, Xspread and Xbase. Its native format is the Gnumeric file format, an XML file compressed with gzip

To install Gnumeric type the following command at the Console Window(Applications->Accesories -> Terminal)

    " sudo apt-get install gnumeric "

After installation is over click (Application -> Office -> Gnumeric Spreadsheet) to launch Gnumeric Spreadsheet.

This is how Gnumeric Looks