There’s more than one way to install applications in Ubuntu. You can use apt, the Synaptic Package Manager, or, you can can even use the Add/Remove menu under Applications.

It brings up a nice interface that allows you to select software to install by category and even lets you sort them by popularity. (Ubuntu comes with a package called popularity-contest that submits back anonymous information to Ubuntu about what software is installed.)

I checked the box next to xpdf since it is one of my favorite PDF readers and pushed Apply. After confirming and asking me for my password, it began the install.

After an absolutely painless install, I head back up to my menu to find that the program launcher is already there. Gone are the days when you would have to logout/login for your menu changes to propogate.

Recently, I made a post about how Linux on the Desktop (LotD) has been getting closer. I’m starting to think that I was wrong, and that LotD has already appeared in the form of Ubuntu.

Now, I’m not the only one that thinks this way. My friend Matthias recently posted on how Ubuntu told him he needed to charge his wireless mouse.

Jorge Castro has been talking about this for quite a while now. I’ve always considered him to be a bit of a Gnome and Ubuntu fanatic, so until recently, I’ve always taken the things he says with a grain of salt (well, I still do, but it’s a smaller grain).

So, what brought this change about? Ubuntu’s Edgy Eft release. Yeah, Dapper was polished, but it just felt like some things were either missing or just didn’t work the way I thought they should. Well, those complaints have mostly disappeared.

So, starting tomorrow, as a semi-regular feature (at least for now), I’m going to be posting some of the things that make Ubuntu a Linux desktop for me.

Yesterday I did a fresh install of Ubuntu’s newest release, Edgy Eft on my desktop. Getting a fresh install back to the way I like it generally a long process of remembering what I actually had installed. Firing up my music player of choice, Amarok, made things a bit easier though.

I tried to play one of the songs in a playlist, only to have Amarok tell me I didn’t have the codec to play .mp3s. However, what was nice to see was an option to install it.

Much to my delight, Synaptic opened up, and proceeded to install the two packages I needed to listen to my music.