Having re-installed a brand new copy of Ubuntu and required updates, there are a few applications that I immediately download because, without them, I would not be able to do most of my day-to-day work. Here, in no particular order, are the five application or tools I have to have but aren’t included in a default Ubuntu install.

HTML5 and Flash have been used to great effect in recreating traditional desktop apps that can be run through your web browser. Google is so confident that web apps can replace your desktop apps that it has released the ChromeOS, which is not much more than the Chrome web browser presented as a desktop operating system.

My top 6 favourite applications to be installed on Ubuntu Linux would be as follows:

While you can install any software on the Linux desktop with just a couple of mouse clicks, enterprise apps are a different story, because they require a lot of infrastructure software, from high-end web and database servers to basic libraries.

Ever so often, I take a stroll over to KDE-Apps.org and look at some of the fantastic creations people from the KDE community develop. There are a wide range of apps in nearly every category, but I have selected 5 that stand out and would be very useful additions to my desktop and hopefully yours too. All of these apps are either new or have been recently updated within the past few months.

I decided to reinstall Ubuntu after using Kubuntu for some time. Here are some apps which I installed, I hope you will find it useful...

Installing Ubuntu (or any other Linux) on a Macintosh is a slightly different process than installing Ubuntu on a more traditional PC. Various differences in the hardware, particularly the use of the EFI firmware system, mean that some extra effort is required to get your favourite distro up and running on your favourite hardware.

If you are a web junkie, or depend upon various web sites and services daily you know how quickly your browser can fill up with tabs. Wouldn't it be nice if you can just use small web apps for these needs?

One of the more common suggestions from readers following the article on my personal must-have apps for Ubuntu last week was that I install some sort of virtual machine on my computer and test software that way. So, I decided to do exactly that and found that VirtualBox is not only easy to install on Ubuntu (or other platforms) but is also easy to use.