Finding the Right Program

The wealth of software offered on an Ubuntu system is enormous, so that finding the right tool for the right job can be difficult at times. The following table may help you with this. It is showing programs which are installed on Xubuntu by default, some which are recommended to be added by you, and other programs available in the software archives, grouped by tasks. Please note that you may have to enable restricted repositories to install some of the listed programs.

Task Installed Program Recommended Program Other
Webbrowser Firefox   Epiphany (Gnome), Konqueror (KDE), Dillo
Email Client Thunderbird   Sylpheed-Claws
File Manager Thunar   Nautilus (Gnome), Konqueror (KDE), Xffm (old Xfce Filemanager), ROX-Filer
Text Editor Mousepad   Gedit (Gnome), Kate (KDE), Gvim, XEmacs, Nedit, Nano
Word Processing Abiword   OpenOffice, KOffice (KDE), LaTeX
Spreadsheet Calculation   Gnumeric OpenOffice, KOffice (KDE)
Multimedia Playback (Audio/Video) Xfmedia   XMMS, Beep Media Player, Xine, Mplayer, Totem (Gnome), Rhythmbox (Gnome)
Image Manipulation Gimp   Krita (KDE, part of KOffice)
Picture Browsing GQview   gThumbview (Gnome), KView (KDE)
Chat / Instant Messanger Gaim   XChat
PDF Viewer   Evince-gtk Acroread
Calendar Orage    
Terminal   xfce4-terminal  
System Tools   Xubuntu System Tools  
Package Management   Synaptic  
Software Telephone     Ekiga (Gnome)
Archiving Tool Xarchiver Thunar Archive Plugin  
CD/DVD Burning   Xfburn GnomeBaker (Gnome), K3b (KDE)
FTP Client     Nautilus (Gnome), Konqueror (KDE)
Printer Administration CUPS Web Administration   Gnome Cups Manager (Gnome)
P2P     aMule
Vector Graphics     Inkscape
Desktop Publishing (DTP)     Scribus