Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Zack on November 18, 2010 at 7:30pm

Ubuntu actually comes with most of what you need.

IM -> Pidgin
Torrent -> Transmission
Graphic Editor (Photoshop) -> GiMP
VLC is the best video player for linux imo. Not in Windows though.

I also like SongBird a lot as a music library, but they stopped developing it. Rhythmbox comes default, but if you like fancy, SongBird or Amarok will do nicely.

If you are going 64-bit I'd recommend using Chrome, else you will have firefox crashes all day long on heavy flash sites. Whereas Chrome crashes on a per-tab basis.

Let us know if you have any programs in specific you want to find good alternatives for.

Permalink Reply by apolid rationalist on November 19, 2010 at 4:04am

Probably you want to look into Eclipse.
Said that, I would strongly suggest to spend some time with gcc and company.
Might require a bit of "openmindness" at first, but working at shell level is the where the real power of the platform is for us developers...

Permalink Reply by Jaume on November 19, 2010 at 6:09am

Eclipse is great for collaborative and cross-platform work, might be a bit heavy for a lone beginner though (yet I left my developer job in 2006 and haven't used it since, I have no idea how it has evolved since.)

I second the 'working at shell level' recommendation, with one caveat: it's an easy way to develop idiosyncrasies of one's own (which may become a hinderance when you have to join a developer team), and to reinvent the wheel. Fortunately there's a lot of howtos and good advice available on developer sites, reading them before you start using the command line tools on a regular basis will prevent bad habits.