Moving to Open Source

Forget everything you know about downloading and installing software in windows and prepare yourself for a new experience. Well you don’t need to forget everything but it is a different experience.

I will explain it as I understand it:
The software in Ubuntu is based on packages, there is a huge catalog of the packages right here on your system, there are a few ways of accessing the packages and installing the software from these packages: The easy way, the less easy way, the even less easy way.

But before installing any software you should enable extra packages.
You can do it by going to: system -> Administration -> Software sources
The first tab is Ubuntu Software, I recommend you mark all options possible.
Here you can find more information about the meaning of the options.
Now you should go to “Updates” tab and mark the first 2 options on Ubuntu updates. This is to make sure that your system will be updated regularly.

The easy way installing software in Ubuntu:
when you click on “applications” on the top tool bar and go to add/remove. You will get a screen with a huge list of software packages just wanting you to install them on your system. The packages are arranged by categories, you should browse and install your favorite software.
One of the first programs on the list is 7-zip, you should try installing it as it is very useful in opening zip/rar files. You just click on the square to the left of the software name, and click apply changes.
Note: you will need to put in your system password in order to make these changes.

The less easy way installing software in Ubuntu:
Ubuntu has many many more software packages – about 22,841 and counting.
you can’t see all these via the application menu, in order to see all these packages you need to go to: System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager
Here you can see a full list of all the packages – and it is Huge!. If you wish to install a certain software it is best to search for it via Synaptic.
When you right click on one of the packages you have the options of installing/uninstalling etc.

The even less easy way installing software in Ubuntu:
Sometimes you would like to download and install software directly, this can be done via the terminal. I haven’t gone into it yet because I didn’t need it yet (as I said I will go according to my needs), but you can read more about it here.

Now that we enabled extra software sources we can go on improving our experience through the system.

The next stage:
Improving the surfing experience by installing flash, Java and video & audio codecs.

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