Congratulations! Now that you have Linux Mint, or perhaps another Linux distribution
running on your computer, you still have a few more things to do to make it better and more functional for your personal use. Linux is very easily customized.
Firstly, I need you to become familiar with the “software manager” that you will find in the
menu at the bottom left corner of your screen (just like it used to be in Windows). You can
either type “software” into the bar at the top of the menu, or you can scroll down after you
place your cursor over the “all applications” section. When it opens for you (sometimes it
needs to be updated, and a note will pop up). So update it if needed. Once on the site, you
will see that it has almost countless applications available to the Linux user. It is like an app
store for Apple or Windows, but these applications are free and open source. From this
software manager, the user can find software to replace the costly software needed for former Windows users. Here are some suggestions:
- VLC Player (to play media)
- Ttf-mscorefonts-installer (to get Microsoft fonts for your documents)
- Gimp (to replace Photoshop)
- Okular (for PDF documents to replace Adobe)
- Multimedia Codecs (this can be done during original install)
- Audacity (for audio recording)
- OBS (for video and audio recording and streaming)
- Thunderbird (if you want an email client)
- Kazam (screen recorder)
- Kdenlive (for video editing)
- Zoom (for meetings).
There are so many options that it is difficult to cover them all. Here is a website that can
make specific recommendations to proprietary software.
https://www.opensourcealternative.to/
I should also mention that you need to make sure your firewall is installed. Go to the main
menu again and type in “firewall”. You will need to use your password, but once there make
sure that it is turned “on”. Also, there is an icon at the bottom right of the panel that looks like a shield. If it is showing a divided signal, then there are updates available to your system. Click the shield and it will show you. When installed a check mark will appear and the icon on the panel will be a solid white shield. There are no automatic updates like in Windows.
Now, I realize that many Windows users have Microsoft Office as their main word
processor, spreadsheet, program and slide presenter. Linux Mint comes with Libreoffice that covers all these functions, but there is some setting up to make it compatible with the
Microsoft software. For this reason I included the Tft-mscorefonts installer as recommended software to download. Moreover, you will need to change the document file format from the open source .odt to .docx, so that people using Windows software can read your documents correctly. To make LibreOffice work or look like Microsoft Office, please read my earlier article on the ucrmn.ca website.
https://ucrmn.ca/getting-libreoffice-to-look-like-microsoft-office/
Lastly, have fun using Linux. It does have a small learning curve, but it in the end it is
much better for the planet.
Rev. Martin Dawson (retired)
Cornwall, PEI