Kubuntu/Software

Under Construction

This is a new page, currently under construction!

Software

Short guide to the software which is included in your Kubuntu installation.

Games

KDE Games includes an incredible array of board and logic games, as well as arcade and strategy games. Fun and educational games for kids are also included.

See the KDE Games website to see screenshots of games and even play some online. All of the KDE Games are available in the repositories, a couple of clicks away.

Games such as those offered through Steam and Humble Bundles can be installed and played in Kubuntu as well. Please see Steam page for instructions.

Arcade

• KBounce: is a single player puzzle arcade game.

• KBreakout: Destroy as many bricks as possible without losing the ball.

• KDiamond: is a single player puzzle game; build lines of three similar diamonds.

• KGoldrunner: Hundreds of levels of maze, hunting pieces of gold, with enemies in hot pursuit.

• KLines: Inspired by Color Lines, simple and addictive. Online demo version of this game available.

• Kolf: Miniature golf game with 2D top-down view. Courses are dynamic, and up to 10 people can play at once in competition. Kolf comes equipped with a variety of playgrounds and tutorial courses.

• Kollision: A simple ball dodging game

• KSame: is a simple, yet challenging color matching game modeled after !SameGame. Clear board filled with multicolored marbles.

• KSpaceduel: Each of two players controls a satellite spaceship orbiting the sun, in order to eliminate the opponent’s spacecraft.

Board

• Bovo: is a Gomoku (from Japanese 五目並べ - lit. "five points") like game for two players, where the opponents alternate in placing their respective pictogram on the game board. (Also known as Connect Five, Five in a row, X and O, Naughts and Crosses)

• KBattleship: Ships are placed on a board (the sea). Players try to hit each others ships in turns without knowing where they are placed. The first player to destroy all ships wins the game.

• KMahjongg: in this game the tiles are scrambled and staked on top of each other to resemble a certain shape. The player then is expected to remove all the tiles off the game board by locating each tile’s matching pair.

• KReversi: is a simple one-player strategy game played against the computer. If a player's piece is captured by an opposing player, that piece is turned over to reveal the color of that player. A winner is declared when one player has more pieces of her own color on the board and there are no more possible moves.

• KShisen: is a solitaire-like game played using the standard set of Mahjongg tiles. Unlike Mahjongg however, KShisen has only one layer of scrambled tiles.

• KFourInLine: Game for two players based on Connect-Four. Build up a row of four pieces using different strategies.

Card

• KPat: (aka KPatience) is a relaxing card-sorting game, installed by default. To win, a player arranges a single deck of cards in certain order amongst each other. Included are Aces Up, Forty & Eight, Freecell, Golf, Grandfather, Grandfather's Clock, Gypsy, Klondike, Mod3, Simple Simon, Spider, and Yukon. Alternate card decks and themes are available, and statistics; pre-installed.

• lsKat: Lieutnant Skat (from German "Offiziersskat") is a fun and engaging card game for two players, where the second player is either live opponent, or built-in artificial intelligence. You can also play and test an online demo version of this game.

Dice

• Kiriki: is an addictive and fun dice game for KDE, designed to be played by as many as six players. Participants have to collect points by rolling five dice for up to three times per single turn.

• KJumpingcube: Conquer all squares on a board either by occupying an empty square or conquering your opponent's. A maxed out square will distribute its points around it, causing empty squares to be occupied. Watch out for chain reactions!

Logic

• Katomic: is both fun and educational game built around molecular geometry. It employs simplistic two-dimensional looks at different chemical elements. You can also play an online demo version of this game.

• KBlackbox: is a game of hide and seek played on a grid of boxes where the computer has hidden several balls.

• KMines: is the classic Minesweeper game. The idea is to uncover all the squares without blowing up any mines. When a mine is blown up, the game is over.

• KNetwalk: is a single player logic game. Construct the network, connecting all the terminals to the server in the fewest turns possible.

• KSquares: is a fun and exciting game for desktop environment. The game is modeled after the well-known pen and paper based game of Dots and Boxes.

• KSudoku: is a logic-based symbol placement puzzle. The player has to fill a grid so that each column, row as well as each square block on the game field contains only one instance of each symbol.

• Picmi: is a single player logic-based puzzle game. The goal is to color cells according to numbers given at the side of the board in order to uncover a hidden pattern or picture.

Strategy

• Konquest: is the KDE version of Gnu-Lactic Konquest. Players conquer other planets by sending ships to them. The goal is to build an interstellar empire and ultimately conquer all other player's planets.

• KsirK: is a computerized version of a well known strategy board game. KsirK is a multi-player network-playable game with an AI. The goal of the game is to conquer the world by attacking your neighbors with your armies.

Toy

• KTuberling: a simple constructor game suitable for children and adults alike. The idea of the game is based around a once popular doll making concept.

Graphics

Some basic graphics applications are installed in Kubuntu by default, allowing you to create, view, scan, and manipulate images. More specialized programs for painting, drawing, vector graphics, and photo retouching are available in the repositories.

Okular

Okular is a universal document viewer for many kinds of documents: PDF, Postscript, !DjVu, CHM, XPS, ePub and others; pre-installed.

LibreOffice Draw

LibreOffice Draw is an all-purpose diagramming and charting tool which lets you produce anything from a quick sketch to a complex plan, and gives you the means to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is a an excellent package for producing technical drawings, general posters, and much else; pre-installed.

Skanlite

Skanlite is a simple image scanning application; pre-installed.

Gwenview

Gwenview is an image viewer with many features; pre-installed.

Kamoso

Kamoso is a webcam recorder from the KDE community; pre-installed.

KSnapshot

KSnapshot is the best at desktop screenshots, simple and sweet; pre-installed.

Other Popular Graphics Software

Available from the repositories.

• Krita is a popular new painting and drawing application, available by itself or as part of the Calligra Suite.

• GIMP is an excellent image manipulation application if you need more than !ImageMagick.

• Inkscape is a vector graphics editor that uses the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

• DigiKam is an advanced digital photo management application.

• Darktable is a sophisticated program to work with digital negatives and RAW images.

• Scribus is a desktop publishing program with many features.

Bring images to life with KDE! See Graphics & Imaging for more information.

Internet

Kubuntu is set up to get you online; to the Internet, via chat protocols, and even voice (VOIP) and other new voice applications. This page describes software installed by default, and the best and most popular available alternatives.

Browsers

• Rekonq

This is the default browser shipped with Kubuntu, with a minimal look and advanced features; pre-installed. For more information see Rekonq site and Rekonq Manual.

• Firefox

Installing Firefox is made easy with the Kubuntu-Firefox-Installer.

Tip

Kickoff -> Kubuntu-Firefox-Installer -> Follow the instructions

For more infomation on how to use Firefox see Firefox Getting Started.

• Chrome/Chromium

Chrome is a freeware browser developed by Google; all Chrome releases have been based on the open source version called Chromium. For more information see Features and Chrome on Wikipedia.

Tip

Muon Software Center -> Search chromium -> Select Chromium -> Click Install

Email Clients

There are many options when it comes to email clients. In Kubuntu, Kmail is presented by default, either as a stand-alone client or as part of the Kontact personal information manager (PIM). Other popular email clients include Mozilla Thunderbird, Evolution, and the new Trojitá and Geary as well as old favorites such as Claws Mail and Sylpheed.

Kmail is the pre-installed email component of Kontact, the KDE personal information manager (PIM). Kmail by itself is similar in functionality to other popular email programs, while Kontact is as full-featured as the fanciest personal information managers (PIMs), as it can be configured with calendars, address books, notes, an RSS reader, time tracking, journals and simple project planning. The following are just some of the features of Kmail:

• IMAP, POP3, SMTP support
• SSL, TLS, and Digest-md5 secure logon support
• PGP and GNUPG signatures and encryption support
• HTML reading, spam filtering, internal character sets, search and filter functions, spell checking, and robust searching. More information on Kmail can be found in the Kmail documentation.

Chat Clients

Chatting with friends and family is a popular use of the internet, and Kubuntu provides the necessary applications. There are two default chat clients in Kubuntu - KDE Telepathy for instant messaging, and Quassel for chatting on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). The popular Pidgin, Kopete, Gnome's Empathy and BitlBee are available. The KDE IRC client Konversation is available in the repositories as well.

• KDE Telepathy

KDE Telepathy is in active development, and already works well for daily use. You will find it already installed and ready to configure.

• Quassel

Quassel is the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) client pre-installed in Kubuntu. Not only does it provide functions similar to those of other popular IRC clients such as Konversation, or X-chat, its design emphasizes ease of use. Quassel includes tabbed browsing and notification of messages and other events. Also, it can be connected to a Quassel-core for storage and search of IRC channel logs.

• Konversation

Konversation is KDE's IRC client; very user-friendly with the advanced features you'd expect.

Voice over IP (VOIP)

Voice applications are not installed by default. However, not only the well-known (but not libre) Skype, there are other great free and open choices as well.

• QuteCom (formerly !WengoPhone)is a free software SIP* compliant (VoIP) client.
• Ekiga (formerly !GnomeMeeting) is an open source VoIP and video conferencing application for GNOME. Ekiga uses both the H.323 and SIP protocols.
• Linphone is a web phone: with voice, video, and text instant messaging; SIP-compatible.
• Mumble is a low-latency, high quality voice chat software.
• Skype, while not open source, is free, and can be installed. See Skype on Ubuntu for more information.

KDE software connects you to the world. See Internet, Networking, & Communication for more.

Multimedia

The best in multimedia is installed when you open your new Kubuntu installation. If you get an error message about "missing codecs" please install kubuntu-restricted-extras.

• Pulseaudio

Pulseaudio keeps all your sound and video inputs and outputs working together; pre-installed. If you need to direct your audio or video output to other devices, install the pavucontrol package, launch it by pressing Alt + F2, then type pavucontrol.

• Amarok

Exploring your music in Kubuntu is exciting with the pre-installed Amarok music player. For more about how to use and customize it see Amarok.

• K3b

K3b is a simple, powerful and highly-configurable graphical optical disk burning application for audio, video, data projects, installed by default.

• Kmix

Kmix controls all your audio channels; pre-installed.

• Dragon Player

Dragon Player is a simple interface for playing your movies, TV shows, and music; pre-installed.

Other Popular Multimedia Applications

Available in the repositories.

• Audacity audio recording and editing
• Kid3 tag editor which can generate tags from files or vice-versa, import tags from databases, browse cover arts and lyrics from online resources, drag and drop cover art to a file, export tags, etc.
• MusicBrainz Picard will identify track and CD information by matching digital thumbprints with the MusicBrainz database.
• recordMyDesktop is a simple, friendly movie recording software, which allows you to easily create high-quality, impressive animations of your desktop.
• Kdenlive is an intuitive and powerful multi-track video editor.
• Blender is 3D content creation software that has created numerous open source video games and movies.
• Tomahawk lets you lay music for many different offline and online sources, and share your playlist with your friends.
• VLC is a player and framework that can handle most audio and video formats you'd want to use, and it also works with DVDs, audio CDs, and much more.
• Kaffeine is a KDE media player that lets you play DVDs, video and audio CDs, and it has support for DVB devices as well. Whether you want to watch a movie on DVD, play a few songs, or tune into a show on digital TV, Kaffeine is a good choice for KDE users.
• Banshee has many fans, as it was standard on Ubuntu desktops.
• Rhythmbox is GNOME’s default music player, and now standard in the Unity Ubuntu desktop.
• Miro plays video, but also provides the Miro Guide, which hosts all kinds of channels with content from broadcast and cable TV via Hulu. Also offered are podcasts, a video and audio library, and has built-in !BitTorrent to grab content from sites like !LegalTorrents, giving you video, audiobooks, comics, audio and more.
• Boxee is a "social media center" that lets you play locally stored content or grab content from sources like Hulu. Netflix support is unfortunately not yet supported in Linux.
• MythTV is a very nice, robust media center solution. Heavy users of MythTV might consider installing Mythbuntu on a dedicated media center box.
• XBMC is a media center with a clean interface and easy-to-use controls.

'KDE brings entertainment to your desktop. See [[Special:MyLanguage/Applications/Multimedia|Multimedia, Sound & Video] for more.

Office

LibreOffice

The pre-installed office application in Kubuntu is LibreOffice. It includes Calc, Draw, Impress, Math, Base and Writer. This suite is the open source equivalent of the Microsoft Office suite and each application corresponds to a similar product in that line.

• Calc = Excel
• Writer = Word
• Impress = Powerpoint
• Base = Access

LibreOffice works well with the files created by their Microsoft counterparts, with the exception of Microsoft Access files.

For more information see LibreOffice.

Calligra

KDE offers the excellent Calligra Suite. Calligra is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones. It contains applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, databases, vector graphics, and digital painting.

New to the suite is Author, an e-book authoring application with ePUB export. Besides Words, Sheets, Stage, and Kexi, included are the award-winning Krita, digital painting and drawing; Braindump, a notetaking and mindmapping application; Plan, a project management application that can create Gantt charts; Karbon, a vector graphics editor; and Flow, a programmable flowchart drawing program with dynamically loadable stencils.

All applications available separately or as a suite, from the repositories. For more information see the Calligra Handbooks.

System Settings

Information on adjusting stem settings can be found at System Settings

Utilities

Your newly installed Kubuntu system has some utilities already installed. One of the most useful is not in your menus; just press ALT + F2. Look at the top of your screen; there is one of your most powerful utilities, called Krunner. See more here: Krunner.

Kate

Kate is the pre-installed text editor for KDE. It has many great features for editing plain text or writing code in many different languages. For more information see Kate Handbook.

Ark

Ark is a tool for handling archives of files such as tar, gzip, bzip2, zip, rar and 7z; pre-installed.

Klipper

Klipper is a clipboard to hold copied text for later use. Unlike other clipboards it will hold your entire copied text, rather than just one line; pre-installed.

Knotes

Knotes is a sticky-note application to post notes on your desktop; pre-installed.

Kcalc

KCalc offers basic calculator functions and much more; pre-installed.

Kmag

KMag is the screen magnifier from KDE; pre-installed.

Konsole

Konsole is the KDE terminal emulator, it can be used to run console shells.

Sh

The Bourne shell (sh) was one of the major shells used in early versions of the Unix operating system and became a de facto standard. Every Unix-like system has at least one shell compatible with the Bourne shell. The Bourne shell program name is sh and it is typically located in the Unix file system hierarchy at /bin/sh. The Bourne shell is usually used as fallback for Bash or another shell. The features of the Bourne shell are quite limited if compared to something like Bash.

Bash

Bash stands for "Bourne again shell", a bit of a play on words. For many Linux distribution Bash is the default shell. The Bash command syntax is a superset of the Bourne shell command syntax. Among the features of Bash are: command line editing, command history, the directory stack, the $RANDOM and $PPID variables, and POSIX command substitution syntax $(..)/ When used as an interactive command shell and pressing the tab key, Bash automatically uses command line completion to match partly typed program names, filenames and variable names. Bash syntax simplifies I/O redirection in ways that are not possible in the traditional Bourne shell. For example Bash can redirect standard output (stdout) and standard error (stderr) at the same time using the &> operator.

Using the Terminal

Zsh

The Z shell (zsh) is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a powerful command interpreter for shell scripting. Zsh can be thought of as an extended Bourne shell with a large number of improvements, including some features of bash, ksh, and tcsh. Among its features are: programmable command-line completion, sharing of command history among all running shells, spelling correction, theme-able prompts and it is fully customizable. Attesting to the sheer size of this shell is the famous first sentence of the shell's manual page, which reads "Because zsh contains many features, the zsh manual has been split into a number of sections", and then goes on to list seventeen items.

For a comparison of command shells see this page: Comparison of command shells

Firewall configuration

Ufw

Ufw is the default commandline configuration tool for the firewall. Ufw stands for Uncomplicated Firewall, it is develop to ease iptables firewall configuration. For more information about ufw see: UFW

Gufw

Gufw is a GUI frontend to ufw. By default it is not installed, to install it run the following command from a terminal (Konsole): sudo apt-get install gufw

For more information about gufw see: Gufw

Other Useful Utilities

Available in the repositories.

• Filelight creates an interactive map of concentric, segmented rings that help visualise disk usage on your computer.
• Yakuake is a drop-down terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology.
• Synaptiks is the KDE touchpad configuration tool.

KDE also brings you utilities, tools, and accessories to ease your work. See Utilities & Tools for more.

Education

Information on Kubuntu education applications can be found at Education

Development

Kubuntu offers the tools developers need, from simple editors to IDEs, many languages, compilers, and version control systems. Development packages are not included by default, but everything mentioned here is available in the repositories.

Aside from the applications mentioned below, KDE offers a number of development utilities and specialized applications, described here.

KDevelop

Kdevelop is an IDE (integrated development environment) for all those developers who want to integrate the tools they need for developing in a comfortable and simple solution. The focus is on C++ and CMake, but it can be used for other languages such as PHP and Python.

QtCreator

Qt Creator is a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) tailored to the needs of Qt developers. It provides:

• C++ and !JavaScript code editor
• Integrated UI designer
• Project and build management tools
• GDB and CDB debugging frontends
• Support for version control, desktop, embedded and mobile targets

Eclipse

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an extensible development platform, runtimes and application frameworks for building, deploying and managing software across the entire software lifecycle. Eclipse is more than a Java IDE.

Code::Blocks

Code::Blocks is a C++ IDE designed to be very extensible and fully configurable.

Text Editors

Some developers use simple editors such as Kate, vim, and emacs.

Android Development

For those interested in Android development, `android-tools-adb` and `android-tools-fastboot` are available. Also useful might be this Plasma Active (touch screen development) information.

Distributed Version Control

Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar are available in the repositories, along with older tools, and add-ons.

Languages

All popular languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, Lua, Haskell, Go, Perl, Php and Lisp are available, along with compilers for C++, C, such as g++, gcc and Clang, testing frameworks, toolkits, and other useful packages.

Accessibility

Information on KDE accessibility options can be found at Accessibility

Frameworks

The software in the KDE SC (Software Compilation) is amazing. These are some of the foundational pieces of software that make it all work:

• Plasma is the KDE workspace, and is a technology that can adapt to many types of devices. Currently there are three varieties of Plasma:
• the Plasma Desktop environment
• the Plasma Netbook environment
• the Plasma Active new, cool environment for pads and smartphones
• KWin is KDE's reliable and flexible window manager with hardware accelerated effects for added beauty and usability.
• Oxygen gives your desktop a refreshing and breath-taking visual appearance.
• Phonon brings the magic of sound and video to your desktop.
• Solid helps make your hardware just work.
• Nepomuk is about classification, organisation, and presentation of data.
• Akonadi is responsible for providing applications with a centralized database to store, index, and retrieve the user's personal information.