But can this tool take the place of the original tools? Can the Ubuntu Software Center usurp both Add/Remove Software and Synaptic? Let’s examine the tool and draw our conclusions.

The ultimate goal for the Ubuntu Software Center is to become a single point of focus for software management in Ubuntu. Effectively, the Software Center is going to become the Ubuntu version of the iPhone App Store. Here are the current and planned features:

• Install open source/free software (Version 1).
• Install commercial/non-free software (Version 3).
• Rate and review software (Version 2).
• Replace Synaptic and Gdebi (Version 2).

So by Version 3 the Ubuntu Software Center will be a total one-stop shop for Linux software installation in Ubuntu. Exciting times indeed. But right now we’re at Version 1 and the big question is, does it stand up to previous tools. Let’s take a look.

The interface

Figure 1

When you fire up the Ubuntu Software Center (done by clicking on the entry in the Applications menu) the main window is laid out very clearly (see Figure 1) will be the Banshee (since it has been referenced a number of times on Ghacks.)

To locate Banshee either click on the Sound & Video category (from the main page) or enter “banshee” (no quotes) in the search field and hit Enter.

Figure 2

When the listing appears, select the entry, and click on the right-pointing arrow that appears (see Figure 2). When you click that arrow you will be presented with an information window that allows you to either install the software or visit the software’s web page.

Figure 3

In order to install the selected software, click on the Install button (see Figure 3) which will require you to enter your sudo password. Upon entering your password a new pane will open up showing the progress of the installation. Depending upon the size of the application, this progress could take a while. The speed of the download will also be directly effected by the newness of the 9.10 release and how busy the repositories are.

Once the software is installed you will be returned to the information window that will look a bit different. Where the “Install” button was is now a “Remove” button and, if available, a screenshot will appear.

Adding repositories

Where adding new software sources in Synaptic could be somewhat confusing to new users, adding these same sources in the Software Center has become incredibly easy. All you have to do is follow these steps:

1. Click on the Edit menu.
2. Click the Software Sources entry.
3. Enter your password if you haven’t already authenticated.
4. Click on the Other Software tab in the Sources window.
5. Click the Add button.
6. Enter the entire line (the same line you would add to the /etc/apt/sources.list file in the text area).
7. Click the Add Source button.

You’re done. You no longer have to enter multiple pieces of information for a repository to be added.

Final thoughts

At first I was skeptical about the new Software Center. But after using the tool, and seeing where the tool is heading, I like what I am seeing (and using). I think Ubuntu is going to have a major hit on their hands with the Software Center.

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Along with this power comes a lot of features, some of which aren’t as obvious as others. I have covered adding repositories to Synaptic in my article “Adding repositories to Synaptic” as well as a more broad “Installing applications in Ubuntu.” If you’ve played around around with Synaptic enough you will have discovered some other nifty features. In this article I am going to show you some of the Synaptic features you may not know about yet.

Save space by deleting files

Are you on a system where space is a premium? Did you know that Synaptic keeps a cache of packages on your system that can take up valuable space? If you look in /var/cache/apt/archives you will see a large number of .deb files retained. If you need to get rid of them to save space you can easily do so through the Synaptic package manager.

To delete your Synaptic cache open up the Preferences window from the Settings menu. In the Preferences window click on the Files tab and then click the “Delete Cached Package Files” button and all of those packages will disappear, saving you a good amount of space.

From within this same tab you can configure Synaptic to handle package files in various ways. The default behavior is to only delete packages when they are no longer available.

Fixing broken packages

Have you ever tried to install a .deb from the command line only to find out you didn’t have the right dependencies installed? You might be interested to know that, chances are, that package was marked for installation anyway, and all you need to do to finish that installation is use the Fix Broken Packages feature in Synaptic. To do this click on the Edit menu and select “Fix Broken Packages” entry. The next step is to click the Apply button which will bring up the information window informing you what has to be done to fix the broken package. Make sure you review this, otherwise something could be removed or upgraded that you don’t want removed or upgraded!

What is installed on your computer?

Figure 1

It’s actually fairly easy to see every package currently installed on your machine. To do so click on the Status button in the bottom left pane of the main window (see Figure 1).

Once you have clicked on the Status button click on the “Installed” entry in the upper left pane which will reveal every application installed in the upper right pane. You can scroll through this to see what all is installed.

As you go through this list you will see icons to the left of each package entry. Each icon means something different. In Figure 2 I have pulled up the Icon Legend from the Synaptic Help menu. This legend displays what each icon means.

Figure 2

The icon list should be fairly self explanitory. The most important ones to look for are:

• Marked for installation.
• Marked for upgrade.
• Marked for removal.
• Installed.
• Installed (upgradeable).
• Broken
• Supported.

You can also click in the upper left pane on each section. Say you want to see only a listing of the packages that are upgradable. To do this click on the “Installed (upgradable)” entry and the upper right pane will change to only list those packages.

Final thoughts

Hopefully you seen a tip for the Synaptic package manager that you didn’t know. Synaptic is a large and important tool for the Linux operating system. We’ll come back to this topic to eventually you will be using Synaptic like a pro.

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That was then, this is now. During my first trials with Ubuntu 9.04 I discovered just how far the installation of browser plugins has come. This article will illustrate to you this fact.

Ideally, of course, the distribution would ship with all of the necessary plugins installed. By default there are a number of plugins already for you:

• Demo Print
• DivX
• Quicktime
• VLC (handles many media formats)
• Windows Media Player

But the number one plugin is still missing. Why? The reason for flash missing is because there are actually three different flash plugins you can install. One is the official Adobe plugin and the other two are open source versions. Although I am a big supporter of open source software, both open source flash plugins are still in their infancy and are not yet up to par with the official version. I made the mistake of installing one of the open source versions and had to uninstall so I could get the official version.

How to install

As is typical for Linux, there are a number of ways to install the flash plugin. You can download the plugin from the Adobe site. You could open up a terminal window and issue the command:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

You could open up Synaptic (Add/Remove Software utility) and search for adobe and select “flashplugin-installer”.

Or you could browse to a web site that requires Flash.

The latter is the easiest and reliable.

Figure 1

When you go to a site that requires flash you will see a bar appear with a button on the right side labeled “Install Missing Plugins” (see Figure 1). Click that button and a new window will open (see Figure 2). This new window asks you to choose which flash player you want to install. There are three choices:

Figure 2

• Swfdec: The GNOME version of the flash player
• Adobe Flash Player: Official version
• Gnash: GNU SWF player

Choose the Adobe version and click Next. You will then be warned that the Adobe Flash Player will download and install another application. This is okay. You will be required to enter your user password to continue.

Once the installation has finished you will need to click the Finish button.

Check the installation

After the installation is complete you can check it by opening up the plugins page. Do this by typing about:plugins in the address bar. In this page you will see all installed plugins listed. The first one listed should be the most recently installed, which will be flash.

Using this method does not require you to restart Firefox. You have completed the process of installing the Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox.

Final thoughts

If you have any history with Linux then you know how much of a relief it is to be able to install browser plugins so easily. If you have any interest in using the open source version of these plugins, give them a try. You can uninstall them by looking at the about:plugins page to know which version you have installed. When you know which plugin you have installed search for it in Synaptic and remove it. Once removed you can go through the process of installing through Firefox again.

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Why do applications like Synaptic exist? Simple. Unlike Microsoft Windows where you have to search site after site for applications, or must purchase the boxed goods, Linux likes to have everything in one place. With tools like synaptic Add/Remove Software actually helps you by keeping a vast software repository in one, easy to use, location. That location is helped with GUI front-ends like Synaptic.

In this article you are going to learn how to add the Debian multimedia repository so you can install packages like Acroread. Naturally this is Linux so there is more than one way to conquer this task. But since we want to show just how easy it can be – we want to avoid the command line completely.

Synaptic Main Window

Before we get to the action I will tell you the actual repository that we are going to add is debian-multimedia.org.

The first step is to fire up Synaptic. You will need root (or sudo) access to do this. You can find Synaptic in the Applications menu under Administration. The menu entry will most likely be labeled Add/Remove Software.

When you fire it up you will see the main Synaptic window. From this window you will need to go to the Settings menu and then select the Repository entry.

When the new window opens you will click the New button to start entering a new repository.

Adding a new repository is very simple.

Adding a Repository

When you click the New button all you will see is a new line has been added. Take a close look at the image to the right. You can see each repository requires the following information:

URL: The actually address of the repository.

Distribution: This is the release name of the distribution you are using or the name of the repository you are adding.

Sections: This is the various sections of the repository you want to add. Not all repositories will have a section.

For our acroreader repository you will enter the following:

• URL: http://www.debian-multimedia.org
• Distribution: lenny (this will depend upon the release and the distribution you are using)
• Sections: main

Once you have added the above click OK and the repository will be added.

Now you have to reload your package information. click Reload to update the package information. You might get an error regarding the new repository GPG key. In the case of the Debian Multimedia repository you only need to click on this link and have Gdebi automatically install the key for you.

Now, once the repositories have reloaded, Acroread will show up in a search in Synaptic. You have sucessfully installed a new repository in Synaptic.

Final Thoughts

It is not often that you will have to add repositories to Synaptic. But there will be the occasion when that special application you want is not included in your current set /etc/apt/sourses.list file. Now you know you can add to that file with little to no trouble.

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As with everything Linux, there are multiple ways to install applications: Command line, from source, from binary, or GUI front end. What we are going to discuss is the Ubuntu Graphical Package Management front end Synaptic.

Synaptic is an incredibly easy to use front end for the apt package management system. Synaptic is a one-stop-shop for applications. You can think of it as an equivalent to the Apple App Store for the iPhone – only you don’t have to pay for anything. You just fire up Synaptic, search for the application you want to install, select the application, and click Apply. You will, of course, have to supply your sudo password in order for the changes to be applied.

Let’s take a closer look at how Synaptic works.

Fire it up!

When you first start up Synaptic you will be greeted by the main window.

Synaptic Main Window

As you can see there are three panes, a toolbar, a menu list, and organization selection icon list. The panes are fairly simple:

• Left Pane: This is the package listing. From here you can select categories of applications.
• Upper Right Pane: This pane lists the various packages from either categories or search results.
• Lower Left Pane: This pane reveals information about a selected package.

Let’s first take a look at how to search and install a resulting application. Say you want to install ardour (an open source digital audio workstation). Enter ardour into the Search text area and hit enter. The results will pop up in the upper right pane.

Search Results

As you can see the package you were looking for is right at the top of the list. To install Ardour on your system click the check box and a menu will appear. This menu is the action menu that allows you to select what action to take on a package. If the package is not installed your only option will be to mark the package for installation. You “mark” packages this way so you can go through and mark multiple packages to install, remove, re-install, upgrade.

Select your action

Once you have marked all of the packages you can then click Apply and a new window will appear. This new window informs you what will need to be installed to resolve any dependencies for the requested application.

Dependency resolution

Once you click “Mark” you will be sent back to the main window where you can click “Apply”. After clicking Apply you will have one more window to view which is the Summary Window.

Summary

Once you click Apply the progress window will open to show you how things are going.

Synaptic progress window

When the application installation is complete a window will appear informing you the process is finished.

Changes applied

Now let’s say you don’t know what package you want to install, but you know what category it would fall under. Let’s stick with our example above. Since we know Ardour is an audio application we can be pretty sure it will fall under the multimedia category. If you click through the three Multimedia listings in the category pane (left pane) you will find Ardour in the Multimedia(universe) repository.

Ardour Found

Once you find the listing you will walk through the same steps as you would have above.

And that’s it. Installing an application in Ubuntu is simple. On top of the system being simple, it is a centralized repository where you can find thousands upon thousands of possible applications to install.

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