Switching operating systems can be a daunting task—you have to figure out which of your favorite apps are supported, and find good alternatives for those that aren’t. Here are the ones I installed immediately after switching to Linux.
7
Steam
Steam is the most popular digital game storefront on the internet, and it would be a shame to lose access to your library just because you changed operating systems. Half the fun of having a PC is gaming, after all. Fortunately, Steam itself is available for all major Linux distros, and Steam’s compatibility layer (Proton) has made gaming on Linux easier than ever.
Steam also does a great job identifying which games are likely to work on Linux and which won’t, which helps cut down on the amount of time you waste downloading.
What Is Proton for Steam, and How Does It Affect Gaming on Linux?
Linux gaming is getting better thanks to Proton.
Steam can be downloaded from the Software Center (Linux’s version of an app store) on most distros.
6
Discord
Discord has become the standard for communication among gamers, and it is increasingly popular as a way to get support from developers, especially if you’re into small open-source projects.
It is my primary means of communication with most of my friends these days, and no computer I use regularly is complete without it.
I’d recommend installing Discord using Snap (which you can find by searching your distro’s Software Center) rather than the DEB or RPM packages on Discord’s website, since those both require you to update Discord manually.
5
VSCodium
VSCodium is the telemetry-free fork of Visual Studio Code (VSCode), Microsoft’s popular text editor. VSCodium supports an extraordinary library of extensions for almost any coding language you can think of, which elevates it almost to the level of a full integrated development environment.
I don’t use VSCodium for basic text editing (for that, Vim is good enough), but if I need to sit down and write more elaborate code, VSCodium is the first program I reach for.
You can download it directly from the GitHub repo, and there is also a snap package available.
This IDE Actually Made Me a Better Programmer
One IDE to rule them all. You won’t want to use anything else.
4
Spotify
I’m devoutly attached to listening to music while I work, as it often helps set the mood and tempo of whatever I’m working on.
You can probably get Spotify on Linux through your distro’s package manager, but you can also manually add a repo to download it if necessary.
3
VLC
Most Linux distros will come prepackaged with a media player of some kind, and most of them are actually pretty good in my experience.
However, I’m a creature of habit, and I’ve been using VLC player on Windows since it was released. The number of ways you can tweak your video and audio playback are tough to top, and it supports almost every audio or video format that you’ll encounter on the internet.
It can also convert between media formats in a pinch, which I find myself using way more than I would have expected.
VLC 4.0 also features a UI modernization which I quite like. It hasn’t officially been released yet, but I’ve been using it for a few months now without any major issues.
If you’re looking for something more stable, I’d stick to the official download from VLC or your distro’s repository.
2
ONLYOFFICE
Microsoft’s Office Suite isn’t something I use all the time, but it is still important enough that I needed a good replacement when I migrated to Linux.
LibreOffice comes packaged with a ton of Linux distros, and I found that it worked quite well. However, I wanted something that more closely resembled the user interface of Microsoft Office.
After looking around, I settled on ONLYOFFICE, which is pretty close and was easy to get running. I downloaded it directly from the website, but using the Software Center (or command line) will work too.
1
BitWarden
Everything requires a password, passphrase, or passkey. There is just no getting around it. I’ve used BitWarden to store my passwords for a long time on Windows, and luckily it is available for Linux (Kubuntu in my case) as well. I also took the opportunity to get it running on my phone, which was a pretty easy process. It can also store your debit or credit card information as well, if that appeals to you.
The entire thing is secured behind a strong master password.
Above and beyond syncing your passwords, BitWarden can also generate secure passwords or passphrases for you, and check if your current passwords have been leaked on the internet.
Switching operating systems used to be a pain, especially if you were moving from macOS or Windows to Linux. However, things have changed in recent years, and Linux operating systems aren’t the clunky, specialist-only behemoths they once were.
Getting my entire workflow moved to Linux only took about an hour, and that includes the time I spent finding alternatives, downloading and installing everything, and tweaking settings to my liking.