Debian Wheezy Programs

And the final section of my exploration through Debian Wheezy is the programs.  By the end of this section you will see what is available upon install and how to get other programs based on your needs.

Go ahead and click on Activities and then Applications.

 One of the biggest requests that I see is office needs.  Everyone who uses a computer has at some point used some sort of typing product, we use a word processor for everything from letters to lists.  We use a spread sheet to keep track of our budgets.  In the professional environment we use presentations to win over clients.  Probably the nicest thing about Libre Office products is the ability to save them as Microsoft documents so that you can share them with all the people who still use Microsoft products.  Oh and don't expect to have to get a registration code, or pay for the programs, these bad boys are fully installed and ready to use.

 For the games people, you have an array of games already installed and ready to go.  No payment, no registration, just play away.

 For those who enjoy their graphics here you have a few programs to help view pictures, create drawings, and GNU Image is otherwise known as GIMP which is very similar to a Photoshop type program.

 Bad news for my programmers or wannabe programmers out there, no Programming software comes with the install so we will have to find that on our own.  Though if you stick around long enough I might just share a few things on programming, you know eventually.

 I touched briefly on your favorites bar and now I will show you how to edit it to make it work for you.  Let's go ahead and remove rhythmbox.

 Right click and click on remove from favorites.

 Go into your applications and pick a program to add.  We will go with cheese, which is a great little web cam program to take those awesome selfies. Right click on it and click add to favorites.

 Now you can click and hold on the icon and drag it to a new position if you would like.

 I found that when I opened up a window, like a web page there was no button to make it full screen.

 Go ahead and double click on the top bar of the window, where it has the name.

 You can double click again to make it not full screen.

 Linux has these lovely little things called repositories.  This is where all the programs are stored for easy searching and downloading.  While Debian has an unrivaled list of programs that can be used they do not have an easy double click and download option like some of the other distributions have.  Instead we have a reference guide of all the programs searchable by category.  http://packages.debian.org is where you will find these programs.  For now I am going to recommend you only install programs listed under stable.  In my synopsis of Debian I will get into why we use stable and what the other options mean.

 So you decide you need an email program.  We are going to install IceDove but you can research and pick whichever one is right for you.

 With Debian I recommend that you install from the terminal as you will be sure to get any and all updates and files that you will need to run the program properly.

 Go ahead and open up your Terminal.

 Before we start installing any program we will need to set you up as a superuser.  This makes sure that you don't always have to use the root account.  If you use the root account under all of this it may open you up to vulnerabilities, so as a security precaution it is highly recommended that you use a sudo account. Sudo stands for super user do.  You will only have to add yourself as a superuser once and in the future we should do this directly after install.

In your terminal type in su and hit enter, type in your password and hit enter.

 You will see it says root@"computername":/home/"usernamer"# type in adduser "your username" sudo and hit enter.

 Once your user is added type exit and hit enter.

 At this point you will want to log off and log back in.

 Now to install a program you will want to open up your terminal, type sudo apt-get install "software name" and hit enter.

 Once you type in your password and hit enter the install will begin. 

 While it's installing go ahead and explore more of the programs that are offered for Debian.

 Once the is done, if you want you can type clear and enter in the terminal and give yourself a nice clean slate to play with, of course you don't have to do that, I just have OCD issues with my terminal.

 Now go into your applications and find the program you installed, click on it and open it.

 That was easy.

I have shown all I can show you about Debian at this point in time.  In my next post I will tell your everything I have learned about Debian, some of the information is pretty awesome.