A myriad of open source applications for all your needs

A fresh Ubuntu GNOME installation comes with GNU Coreutils and GNOME Core Apps. A typical user wouldn't need to install even a single software to get same or better user experience than Windows. As mentioned before I'm going to gradually improve and elaborate the posts. For now, let's just take a look at most useful and Windows alternative programs on Linux. Some open source programs have Windows versions as well. A list of most used open source alternatives can be found here.

terminal gives user shell access ; default shell is mostly bash . terminal is equivalent to Windows' command prompt. It lets user execute commands. nano ~/.bashrc command, for example, opens .bashrc file in user's $HOME directory with the nano text editor. More about .bashrc here. firefox index.html command opens index.html file in current working directory. Run pwd to print working directory. with Firefox. Remember you can always do firefox --help or man firefox to see available commands and documentation? Debian based distros (Ubuntu, etc.) use the APT (Advanced Package Tool) and dpkg to update repository, install and uninstall packages. So new users should spend some time on these two utilities.

Everyday programs

1. Office
   LibreOffice is an excellent MS Office alternative; ships with base installation.
2. Email Client
   Evolution is a feature rich (including PGP support) alternative to MS Outlook email client; it comes with GNOME installation. Thunderbird is another good alternative. To install Thunderbird, run sudo apt-get install thunderbird -y. Details email security on part 3.
3. Browsers
   Ubuntu comes with Firefox browser. uBlock Origin and NoScript plugins give a pretty neat and secure browsing experience. I use Firefox for all my money related activities (banking, exchanges, crypto). Chromium, the open source project behind Google Chrome, is my browser for community pages where login is necessary. Execute sudo apt-get install chromium-browser to install Chromium. Google Chrome does my random browsing work. I installed QupZilla to use for only privacy invasive services from Google, Microsoft and the like. In all browsers, my search engine is DuckduckGo.

Computation

I use R to sum up grocery bills, to statistical analysis to graph plotting to textual analysis. I mean basically everywhere. We'll use R and its packages to conduct analysis and evaluate crypto assets. Python is another alternative to R as an investment workbench.

Tools used by intermediate to expert users or for specific needs

Here we'll talk about tools needed to tweak and build applications.

1. gedit, nano, vi, vim and emacs
   These are most common text editors, listed by easiest to most complicated. gedit is equivalent to Windows' notepad. nano has more functionalities - my favorite editor is nano. If a user does almost everything from terminal, vi or vim will fulfill his need; emacs is suitable for those using terminal all the time. emacs even has its own programming language, Lisp. More about vim and emacs here.

2. Text manipulation
   awk, sed and grep are used, for example, to search a specific phrase in text files, change text contents, etc. Simply put, these are used to deal with textual data.

3. Development tools
   make, cmake, build-essential and git are must if you build applications from source. make and cmake comes with base installation. To install a program, run sudo apt-get install <program-name>. You'll use more of such tools, for example, to build newly released crypto wallet or to tweak mining softwares.

4. Reporting and academics
   In some cases, we might need to write reports for investors/partners. I use Texmaker LaTeX editor to write documents that contain mathematical notations. LyX is another great LaTeX editor. Docear makes referencing a lot easier, especially when you have hundreds of citations.

5. Accounting
   GnuCash is an easy-to-use, yet more powerful than some of the most used closed source accounting softwares. You can use it to keep track of grocery expenses to maintain accounting of a small to medium size business. Why not keep track of which crypto assets return the most on investments (ROI) with GnuCash? Though Accounting knowledge makes GnuCash more productive, but Accounting expertise isn't absolutely necessary.

That's pretty much all for basic applications. See you soon with part 3 - secure communication; PGP, private email, etc. Happy Steeming!