ApPLICATIONS

Linux full of applications

Compared to OS Windows, applications are administered in a different way. The aim of the concept of distributions is to have a firm grip on the SW installation and deal with likely dependencies, which means that with the Linux you won't face DLL problems. The applications are usually available via package managers for the particular distributions. If you need to install an application, go to your installed distribution and search for Program Administrator, Package Administrator, Install/Uninstall Software etc.; select the particular application and install it.

Modern Linux distributions comes to you preloaded with tons of applications. It's highly propable, that applications on installations media will satisfy all your common PC task needs.

In the following section, we have listed an overview of selected applications operated under Linux. The list is not complete; just the most frequently used applications with maximum compatibility and utilizability have been selected.

Office Applications (substitute for MS Office)

OpenOffice.org : OO.org suite is the most frequently used Linux office package. It consists of an advanced text processor (Writer); spreadsheet (Calc); a tool to create presentations (Impress), graphic program for pictures manipulation (Draw) and data manipulation application (Base).

The OpenOffice.org package offers perfect compatibility with MS Office, and a similar user interface. There is a bonus; direct export of documents created by the user into PDF format. You may also create PDF forms.

An initial format for the documents is the ODF format, awarded with an ISO quality certificate. In addition to ODF, OpenOffice.org also supports saving or opening the file formats DOC, XLS, PPT, RTF, etc. OpenOffice.org is mainly sponsored and developed by Sun Microsystems and OpenOffice.org community.

Graphics

Raster graphics

Gimp : Work in layers and work with many standard picture formats is offered here. Commercial graphic programs may be run as well.

Vector graphics

Inkscape : The user interface is comparable to Corel Draw. If you are able to work with Corel, Inkscape is a piece of cake. Supports many graphic formats, export into bitmap, etc. Similarly to Corel, you can process curves, ellipse, modify text formats or work with pictures.

Music

XMMS : X MultiMedia System is a program for playing music in various audio formats. As a standard, there is support of Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV, CD audio; many others may be played by means of plug-ins. The graphic interface is similar to the WinAmp program; you may change it by means of skins; visualizing plug-ins are supported, and there is always a playlist and CDDB support. XMMS provides support to plug-ins for various audio effects, and output via any Linux audio systems (OSS, Alsa, eSound, Arts, etc.). XMMS is a time-tested program (it originates from the time before the MP3 format).

Video

Mplayer : Excellent Linux program for video projections. It is able to work with the MPEG, AVI, ASF, OGG, VOB formats and many others; there are many codecs, both native and win32 DLL (including the popular DivX/XviD). The program is able to play DVD, VideoCD, TV and stream from the Internet. As for the output, any hardware may be used, from OpenGL accelerated graphic up to text console (film in ASCII-art). The video may be filtered through various types of filters (denoise, deinterlace), and completed with subtitles in many formats.

Mencoder : Top-quality Linux program intended for film encoding. The functions are the same as with the Mplayer - the only change is that instead of the output on the screen, the film is recorded in another format. Of course, there are also multiple encoder passes for the MPEG4 (DivX), the audio may be encoded in the MP3 or AC3; many filters are available, and cutoff and many other settings to reach top-quality results.

Internet

Mozilla Firefox : World Wide Web browser praised and awarded many times; it has intuitive interface, capability to block viruses, spyware, and pop-up advertisement windows. It is frequently used on commercial platforms as well; the reason why the Mozilla Firefox is so popular is its security. Among other useful functions, there are e.g. panel-search, live bookmarks (RSS), and integrated download.

Mozilla Thunderbird : E-mail and newsgroup client capable of eliminating unwanted e-mails, with spellcheck, support provided, etc. The program supports IMAP/POP, HTML messages, keys, improved search, address book, message confirmation, advanced filters, addresses via LDAP, import tools, advanced search and capability to administer more e-mail and discussion accounts.