| |||||
 | avast! A Linux offering of the popular Avast antivirus scanner. |  | Clam AntiVirus The original open source virus scanner. |  | AVG A version of AVG’s Virus Scanner for Linux. |
 | BitDefender Powerful virus protection with a free license for personal use. |
 | GUFW A graphical interface for the UFW firewall. |  | Shorewall An app to make managing iptables easier. |  | Firestarter A good quality firewall with graphical interface. |
 | Mondo Rescue A capable disk recovery toolkit. |  | TestDisk A utility to recover lost partitions. |  | safecopy A utility that extracts data from damaged areas and replaces dd. |
 | PhotoRec A video, document, and archive recovery utility. |  | ddrescue A simple data recovery utility. |
 | CrashPlan An excellent, sophisticated backup program. |  | BackupPC An open source backup system with web interface. |  | Deja Dup An extremely simple but effective backup program. |
 | LuckyBackup A simple backup program for quick and easy protection. |  | rsync A configurable console-based synchronization program that is commonly used in backup situations. |
 | Ubuntu-Tweak A great control panel to manage many features in Ubuntu. |  | System Monitor A simple and interesting way to view systems stats. |
 | Google Chrome/Chromium A great browser from Google based on open source projects. |  | Firefox The world’s most popular open source web browser. |  | Midori A lightweight webkit browser. |
 | Opera The “fastest and most advanced” browser available today. |  | Epiphany A simple web browser that is commonly shipped with GNOME. |  | Konquerer The default web browser of the KDE desktop environment. |
 | Links Links is text WWW browser with tables and frames. It runs on Linux, Unix, OS/2 and Windows. |
 | Thunderbird Most popular cross-platform open source email client. |  | Claws Mail A user-friendly, lightweight, and fast email client. |  | Evolution A great email and calendar program for GNOME. |
 | KMail A full-featured email client specifically for KDE. |
 | Kopete A great IM program for KDE. |  | Pidgin the most popular open source cross-platform IM program. |  | XChat An easy to use IRC client. |
 | Empathy An IM client similar to Pidgin, for shipping with GNOME. |  | TeamSpeak 3 Great multi-platform voice chat program. |  | Gwibber A straight-forward social messaging app. |
 | Liferea An easy-to-use and effective RSS feed reader. |  | Emesene A chat program that allows you to connect to different networks like MSN, Gtalk, Facebook chat, Jabber and others. |  | Skype The most popular VoIP desktop client. |
 | Inkscape A great editor for SVG files. |  | Shotwell A simple photo manager for GNOME. |  | F-Spot A photo manager like Shotwell but with more features. |
 | Cheese Photo Booth Take pictures with many funky effects. |  | GIMP The most popular open source image editor. |  | Scribus A great desktop publishing program with many features. |
 | digiKam An advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac-OSX. |  | Darktable A sophisticated program to work with digital negatives and RAW images. |
 | Banshee A great iTunes-like music manager. |  | Rhythmbox Similar to iTunes and doesn’t depend on Mono. |  | MPlayer A very capable media player. |
 | OggConvert Able to convert most media types into the open source OGG format. |  | Sound Juicer Rips music off of your CDs into MP3s. |  | Amarok A great music manager for the KDE desktop environment. |
 | VLC Media Player A media player that can handle virtually everything. |  | Kdenlive An elaborate non-linear video editor for KDE. |  | Openshot An innovative video editor with 3D effects. |
 | Pitivi A simple and easy-to-use video editor for GNOME. |  | Totem A simple media player for common formats. |  | Hulu Desktop A good desktop counterpart for Hulu videos. |
 | Xvidcap An efficient way of capturing your video into a video using console-based commands. |  | XBMC A very advanced open source media center that is easily installable and extensible. |  | Blender Highly advanced 3D content creation software that has created numerous open source video games and movies. |
 | GParted The most popular partition editor for Linux. |  | Nautilus Default file navigator for GNOME. |  | Dolphin Default file navigator for KDE with social media features. |
 | Thunar A lightweight file navigator for XFCE. |  | Krusader An advanced two-pane file navigator commonly used with KDE. |  | Baobab Disk Usage Analyzer A graphical, menu-driven viewer that you can use to view and monitor your disk usage and folder structure. |
 | GNU Midnight Commander File Manager GNU Midnight Commander is a file manager for free operating systems. |
 | LibreOffice An enhanced office suite based off of OpenOffice. |  | OpenOffice The original open source office suite. |  | Abiword A lightweight word processor, usually replaces full office suites. |
 | Gnumeric A great lightweight replacement for spreadsheet programs. |  | Xournal Take notes or annotate with high detail. |  | KOffice The default office suite for the KDE desktop environment. |
 | PyRoom Write anything without any distractions. |
 | Tomboy A great note-taking application. |  | Gnote Gnote is a port of Tomboy to C++. |  | Hamster Time Tracker Tracks the time you spend on projects. |
 | Gnome-Do A quick way to launching your applications. |  | Docky One of the best docks around. |  | Avant Window Navigator A good dock alternative to Docky. |
 | Cairo Another dock alternative to Docky and AWN. |  | Shutter An amazingly advanced screenshot tool. |  | Dropbox The top file synchronization tool, for Linux. |
 | QuickSynergy An easy way to share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers. |  | Gnome Tweak Tool The easiest way to configure advanced settings while using Gnome Shell. |
 | GNOME The most widely used GTK desktop environment. |  | KDE A beautifully flashy desktop environment based on Qt. |  | LXDE An extremely lightweight desktop environment to maximize performance. |
 | Enlightenment A desktop environment that is lightweight yet aesthetically good-looking. |  | Xmonad A simple tiling window manager that allows great customization. |  | Openbox A very bare-bone desktop environment that uses almost no resources on its own. |
 | Xfce A lightweight but highly capable GTK desktop environment that still makes use of panels by default. |
 | File Roller The default archive manager in GNOME. |  | Ark A feature-rich archive manager for KDE. |  | Tar Provides the ability to create tar archives, as well as various other kinds of manipulation. |
 | Brasero A utility to burn CDs. |  | Gmount ISO A simple program to mount ISO files to folders. |  | K3b The CD/DVD Kreator for Linux. |
 | Transmission A program for downloading torrents. |  | Deluge An awesome but unappreciated cross-platform BitTorrent client. |  | Miro Download torrents and online videos. |
 | Uget Free, open source download manager. |  | Wget Non-interactive commandline tool for retrieving files using HTTP, HTTPS and FTP, the most widely-used Internet protocols. |
 | Urban Terror A popular first person shooter with good performance. |  | Alien Arena High detail first person shooter with sci-fi attitude. |  | Warzone 2100 Futuristic real time strategy game for survival. |
 | FlightGear The best open source cross-platform flight simulator. |  | Extreme Tux Racer A fun game to slide Tux down hills and collect fish. |  | Nexuiz Another high detail, futuristic first person shooter. |
 | Supertuxkart A racing game similar to Mario Kart. |  | The Mana World A fictional open source MMORPG. |  | openBVE A fantastic open source train simulator. |
 | Pingus A lemmings-like game with a good number of levels. |  | Red Eclipse A fast-paced, fun futuristic shooter that runs well on most hardware. |
 | LastPass Cross-browser and cross-OS online password manager. |  | KeePassX Open source password manager to stores passwords locally and encrypted. |  | TrueCrypt An open source solution to great file encryption. |
 | GnuCash Manages your money in multiple accounts and currencies. |  | Redshift Changes the color temperature of your screen to prevent tired eyes. |  | WINE A compatibility layer for some Windows programs. |
 | Compiz The best desktop effects on Linux. |  | Eclipse A full featured programming IDE. |  | Geany A lightweight programming code editor. |
 | KMyMoney Another money management program with KDE integration. |  | Kwin Great-looking desktop effects, commonly used on KDE desktops. |  | DraftSight A 2D CAD editor, one of the few for Linux. |
 | BleachBit BleachBit quickly frees disk space and tirelessly guards your privacy. |
 | Emacs An extremely customizable editor that does more than just plain text. |  | Vim A more complex editor for the terminal with plenty of features. |  | Nano A simple, uncomplicated editor for the terminal. |
 | Gedit A powerful editor out-of-the-box, and a favorite among many GNOME users. |  | Bluefish Editor for programmers with focus on dynamic and interactive websites. |  | Leafpad A simple GTK+ text editor that emphasizes simplicity. |
Disclaimer: All applications listed were thoroughly reviewed. MakeUseOf is not responsible for any damage and/or data loss
that might result from use of any of the above mentioned applications.
Hide 107 Comments
thanks
k3b is missing from your CD/DVD tools
And that’s a very good, easy to use program.
yes it is better than Brasero
thanks for the input, we’ll check them out
k3b is better than Brasero , Brasero has corrupted many of my dvd rw discs (checked my disc drive its perfectly ok)
debian is missing in the destro list and so is mandriva
why are the default softwares given here aren’t there any alternatives
for the most part they are the defaults because they are the best. this isn’t windows we are talking about.
Enigmail provides PGP compatible support for mail encryption with Thunderbird.
In Ubuntu The All Movies And Games And Softwares And Songs Are Not Supporting How To Execute That All ….
movies can be played by downloading and installing ubuntu restricted extras
some games and softwares can be executed by using wine
I have to compliment the Shutter developers for making the best screen capture tool I have ever had the pleasure of using. Check it out!
thanks, will check it out
For netbook users (like me) GIMP is not a pleasure to use. A great alternative is Pinta!
Also I really miss Audacious in this list!
Now I’m gonna check out Miro and Deluge:)
Thanks!
deluge is goooooooooood
Nice compilation of useful softwares for Linux! Good work
I can’t believe the absence of digiKam and Kate from this list!
You forgot digiKam
Add:
- Emesene
- Arora
- ePDFViewr
- Graveman
- Leafpad
- Bleachbit
thanks for the recommendation, we’ll check them out
2 things: XFCE is missing in the desktop environments, as well as AssaultCube in the games.
XFCE is a good Lightweight desktop environment. AssaultCube is a good lightweight FPS.
XFCE is really good. I got a free laptop from a relative, but it’s kind of old with a Celeron processor and 1GB of RAM. I just installed Xubuntu and it ran awesome. Took me a while to figure out that it won’t boot from DVDs though, only CDs.
I only have 5.91 GB left on my MBP, so I’m gonna see if I can use this laptop as an iTunes server or some sort of extra storage.
nice great help if you are unsure what programs to use great selection.
Nice post! Thanks!
I think Terminal is the best built-in software
thanks, will check them out
Looking for an ”Easy, step-by-step’ procedure for hooking up my old desktop PC to the Network.
I loaded Ubuntu and can’t figure it out. Need some very basic help here.
Hello,
Could you ask this on MakeUseOf Answers, http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/
Aibek
By now I’m sure you got what you need, but in the instance that you haven’t, Linux Mint is much more user friendly. Ubuntu done right, as they say.
Good list.
Would like to have seen this refined a little more. I also think you should take a look at Komodo Edit. It’s an open-source editor I’ve come to really like.
A neat,useful and a good compilation
Good site to give some useful information for starters of Linux who is not aware of the available sources and info on Linux – Thanks for your information-RSV
what are the best editors for pdf files in linux? can you add your choices to the list, tks
its ok
It’s unbelievable my buddy’s step-sister makes USD77/hr on the internet. She has been out of work for 5 months but last month her income was USD7463 just working on the internet for a few hours. Here’s the site to read more… MakeCash17.cøm
This I can use in my Mint 12.Thank you very much.I will tell my friends.
Nice Effort.
woa! perfect thank you very much….
Please mention the diff tools………….
I am using gvimdiff(gvim -d) and kdiff3.
Very usefull!
Missing from mail clients is Mutt. Missing from desktop environments (window managers) is Awesome. Missing from communication is Irssi, Bitlbee, and ZNC. Missing from others is Tmux. Missing from distributions is Gentoo. Other than these puzzling oversights, it’s a pretty good list.
Please include LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). I think this is the best os available.
I can see they have listed even the softwares of windows here, mostly the Anit VIRUS, Does my OCELOT really need then. GUYS don’t show greedness here of softwares
thanks for shares!
how can i get beginner command list? …plz let me know ..thz alot…
here you go, http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/linux-commands-reference-pdf
There should be a “terminals” section and Terminator should be top on the list.
yep, totally missed debian. oh well.
Warsow should be in the Games section, imo.
Deadbeef is a lightweight, feature rich audio player.
Also Parcellite, glipper or some other good clipboard manager(I don’t know any KDE ones).
You missed out on NetBeans! I tried most of the listed code-editors, but NetBeans is by far the most awesometastic of all!
Add two tiny but useful software:
QuickSynergy for mouse and keyboard sharing
XVidCap for screen recording
i love linux. have been using linux for years. this is a helpful page to many im sure. however i thought id throw in my 2 senses…
linux is a complicated multiple distribution mess. anyone who has no idea how to use a computer is offended by linux because it doesnt have a mainstream set of rules. there are a million ways to skin the cat with linux, and if nothing else works, get out a text editor and a terminal…YIKES! the thought of doing that for someone who uses a computer to ONLY get on youtube, watch a movie, play a game, and send out email to everyone in their friend list on tuesday is absurd at best.
now ive used distros from damn small, off the wall shit like puppy linux and easy peasy, useful systems like centos (for a thin client) all the way to ubuntu & red hat enterprise systems. and after learning how to navigate, use and make functional, i want to say this:
make a standard distribution that works on all levels of hardware with a software payload that enables video playback of an .mkv, .avi, & mp4 file built it. along with mp3 support. no one wants to know what a good bad or “ugly set” are. america is stupid, the rest of the world isnt far behind. it has to be something geared to a completely computer illiterate individual, like google’ s chrome os.
now theres a well thought out way. the user has no control over their data, it is stored in a server, in the right directory. in the same place every time, with redundant backup. the user never has to know where it goes, just what goes in.
it reminds me of hg wells the time machine when he meets the eloi and he asks: where does the food come from, who farms it?” the eloi replied: “it just grows, it always grows.” (completely ignorant that a cannibalistic race of underground animals are cultivating the food, and the eloi…
why do we aspire toward underachievement? when is a car going to drive its self so i can stop stressing over the dip shit on their cell phone trying to drink coffee on the freeway driving 72mph?
whatever happened to edubuntu? why dont they get together with the TTC and build a college in a box. i already did.
wake up world. please?
JDownloader is one of the best download managers too
if you are looking for a download client for bittorrent, try deluge, the gui is similar to utorrent (which is most widely used.)
you will also need the “good”, “bad” and “ugly” set along with vlc media player and gxine (i love this player because it handles almost everything, and you can skin the interface like winamp.) amarok will manage your ipod/phone.
open source the world.
For me the best and fastest text/code editor is Geany (gedit is slow and not so smart).
Music: Audacious
Movie: Smplayer + VLC
Virtual machine: Oracle Virtualbox
Check out
Clementine player (Amarok 1.4 “clone”) http://www.clementine-player.org/
G-thumb (image viewer/editor) http://live.gnome.org/gthumb
Seamonkey (Email client/web browser/html editor) http://www.seamonkey-project.org/
MyPaint (Digital painting program) http://mypaint.intilinux.com/
:]
fedora 16 , linux mint 12 are the latest version anyway nice selection of most used software for linux
there is no Jdownloader
Awesome. Personally used Bluefish before, and loved it.
Gnome-Pie is the best launcher out there for ANY linux distro
The easy to use interface adds a lot of cool effects to your desktop
Awesome informative post.
After installing Linux, you need these programs for sure;
All of these can be install via synaptic or whatever software channel in other distros.
Web Design:
Quanta Plus ( only supported up to ubuntu 11.04 )
Kompozer
jEdit
Compression:
Peazip
Photo handling:
Phatch
Webcam:
Cheese Webcam booth
Desktop Search:
Catfish
Games:
Dolphin Gamecube / Wii Emulator
Mupen64+ Nintendo 64 Emulator
Graphics:
gcolor2
Gimp ( doesn’t ship with ubuntu anymore )
3D Graphics:
Blender 3d
Multimedia:
gstreamer ugly set
thanks
Great…..Thanks.
Xfce really should be on this list IMHO.
thanks for the input, we’ll check it out
I’d like to nominate fotoxx. Lightweight, easy, fairly simple – not too complicated. Edit photos for the crowd who don’t need all the features and complications of Gimp.
awesome.
as good as Gnome Commander
Sabana rancak ko ….
i like
Broken link – http://picasa.google.com/linux/
DeaDBeeF is a great lightweight music player for Linux/*nix systems,it;s not bloated like the others audio players, keeping it simple as possible.
It’s the best Foobar2000 alternative for Linux
Instantbird is also a very good communication tool…
i miss the (imo) best media center software in known universe
take a look at xbmc.org, i think it could be listed here, too.
And, by the way: it’s a sin, you don’t have Debian listed here
thanks for the input, we’ll check out the XBMC before the next update to the page
“Basket” is missing in productivity. At least I like it.
thanks, we’ll check it out
i miss a lot here:
- rsync (backup)
- xfce (desktop environment)
- licq (communication)
- debian (distribution)
and some more…
thanks for the recommendations we’ll go over them
Great Collections dude keep it up……..
Thanks
but why you forgot Xfce in Desktop Envirenment
We have added it to our list of apps to look into. Thanks for the suggestion!
Well ! interesting post.. All under one page.. Thanks
I think you should update this page. Ubuntu 12.04 is out, and Unity is much better than it was in 11.04 and 11.10.
Please add Quanta, a great programmer’s editor
Two nice utilities: regexxer (to search your files using regular expressions) and kodos (regex builder)
My Firefox add-ons: DownThemAll (download manager), Scrapbook (downloader for off-line browsing and archiving), Firebug (edit, debug HTML, CSS, Javascript). Sync was an add-on, now is integrated in Firefox (superDuper! take your environment everywhere… )
One for the toolkit: Parted Magic. It’s a live CD, small (187 MB) and full of recovery tools. Can read Linux and Windows partitions. Transfer data between them. After loading in memory CD is ejected so you can use the drive. My favorite tools there: the partition editor, MC (midnight commander), Firefox + flash reader (for Facebook and Youtube). Network is easily recognized. Leafpad for editing. Hexedit for hexadecimal editing. Testdisk for disk checking. More than 115 utilities in on CD.
Miro wants a donation before you can download it….
We tested it and it downloads just fine.
NAZMUS-007
Ubuntu is now 11.10 isn’t it?
great information! thanks
so good
What about LaTeX and other educational packages.
check out Darktable: one of the most perfomant Raw converters around!
This provides an excellent snapshot of Linux distros and app. No criticism of the distro section those certainly the are the major ones. One suggestion for the Audio section is Audacious – it a simple, light media player that you can skin. IT doesn’t try to manage all your multimedia files it just plays music. There isn’t a similar app listed in that section that could be said to be like Audacious and do one thing well.
I was bemused by the Desktop Environment section. I’ve never heard of Xmonad and enlightenment is relatively niche. Lxde is up there but where is Xfce. A lot more people have started using Xfce recently due to the Gnome 3/Unity debacle and I’d estimate it the most popular DE after Gnome and KDE.
Good, thank you for the list, w’ll check them
hi can anyone advice me what is the best linux based operating systemm and what is the difference between apple mas osx and linux .. which one do you recommend which is user friendly and not complicated.and doesnt destroy my system
Macho, I recommend you to ask you question on MakeUseOf Answers.
What about DarkTable at photo section?
Blender is also a video editor. Its not easy, but its very powerful. It has the extra added bonus of being a 3D modeler. The video editor is the less known side of Blender. Personally I find Blender really awesome for my video editing ( I have only tried Openshot and that wasnt as powerful as Blender, the other editors I havent used, yet).
I googled to the website, it is great. And I also would like to recommend an audio player called Audacious, it is kind of a pure and simple player, but full featured. It may reminds you the foobar2000 on the Windows Platform. I believe it worth a try.
had no idea there were so many software utilities for Linux, very good! I’m sure it all works better then Microsoft
some suggestions:
backup: fwbackups – good for one time or incremental bakups
maintenance: gconf cleaner – cleans preferences database, your maintenance section might also include bleachbit (you have it listed under Others software, but it is a system cleaner), the maintenance could also include Gparted (it is not really a file manager)
Productivity: Zim (wiki note taking)
What is the best font viewer/manager?
Best pdf editor? (to insert pages, etc)
best twitter client?
tks for your work, it is becoming a one stop page for the best apps