This tutorial explores various software that you can install on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. There is a variety of things that can be installed on Ubuntu 22.04, hence we have divided all the software into two categories: Ubuntu user and DevOps.
We not only provide you with ideas of what can be installed but also link to tutorials that take you through the installation process.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- What software you can install on Ubuntu 22.04 as an every day Ubuntu user
- What software to install on Ubuntu 22.04 for DevOps
Things to install on Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop
This section lists some selected software you can install on the Ubuntu 22.04 operating system as an every day user.
Desktop Environments
When you install Ubuntu 22.04 it will come with the default GNOME desktop. If you decide that you would like to stay with this default desktop environment you might be interested in installing GNOME shell extensions or GNOME tweak tool to customize Ubuntu’s looks and behavior.
If GNOME does not appeal to you, you can install a different desktop environment on your system with a single command. Hence, it is straightforward to experiment with different desktop environments to find the one that suits you most. For example, Budgie and Mate desktop environments are shown in the screenshots below.
We have provided you with instructions on how to install various desktop environments in a range of articles. We also included Ubuntu 22.04 desktop screenshots in each article, which may help you with your choice. You can also see our overview of Ubuntu desktop environments in the article: The 8 Best Ubuntu Desktop Environments (22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux).
Alternatively, you may decide to download Ubuntu 22.04 flavour which already has the desktop environment you like as default desktop. See also how to install Ubuntu 22.04 GUI with the tasksel command.
Internet Browsers
There is a range of web browsers you can install on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. You may already have a favorite browser or you may be still deciding which browser is right for you.
See our installation tutorials below to pick whichever web browser would suit you best on your Ubuntu 22.04 system:
Communication and Collaboration
A good example of a popular communication app would be Telegram. Additionally, Discord is very popular amongst video gaming communities.
Document Editors
This section will refer you to installation guides of various document editors. One of the main applications you might need to install on Ubuntu 22.04 is Libre Office, which is a whole office suite including, among others, spreadsheet, presentation and document writer.
One of the PDF viewers that could be installed on Ubuntu 22.04 is Adobe Acrobat Reader. Note, however, that Adobe no longer supports Acrobat Reader for Linux, hence we recommend installing the Okular PDF viewer or other one listed below.
If you would like to write mathematical equations we recommend Latex as your document writing application with a selected Latex editor. Below we show TeXstudio Latex editor and compiler.
Moreover, if you are interested to install alternative fonts on your system, you can also find links below to guides which describe this installation process.
Entertainment and Gaming
Media players can be installed on Ubuntu 22.04 to play videos and music. One of the best choices for this is VLC Media Player.
If you are a gamer you will be interested in installing Steam, PlayonLinux, or Lutris.
Additionally, we provide you with instructions on how to install Minecraft Client and Server on Ubuntu 22.04 and use Wine to run the Battle.net app.
Graphic Cards
Some of the Graphics Drivers you may wish to install on Ubuntu 22.04 is NVIDIA and AMD Radeon. In the article How to install the NVIDIA drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish Linux we discuss various ways of installing this graphic driver. These include an automatic install using standard Ubuntu repository, an automatic install using PPA repository to install NVIDIA Beta drivers and a manual Install using the official Nvidia.com driver.
AMD graphic cards are well supported on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. The default open source AMD Radeon Driver is installed and enabled. However, since the Ubuntu 22.04 is a long term support (LTS) release the AMD Radeon graphic card users have few AMD Radeon driver installation options to their disposal.
If you’re planning on using an AMD graphics card with Ubuntu 22.04, we provide you with the install instructions in the article: AMD Radeon Ubuntu 22.04 Driver Installation.
If you are not sure you can easily check what graphics driver your system is currently using and what graphics card model is part of your system’s hardware.
You may also be interested in CUDA, which is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface model created by Nvidia. It allows software developers and software engineers to use a CUDA-enabled graphics processing unit for general purpose processing.
Scientific Software
If you are a scientist, you may be interested in installing some data science software such as R with RStudio or Matlab.
Things to install on Ubuntu 22.04 for DevOps
This section lists some selected software you can install on the Ubuntu 22.04 operating system as a DevOps.
If you are a DevOps or a Software Developer you may like to start with installing programming languages and necessary libraries.
Python 2 has been completely dropped on a default system installation in Ubuntu 22.04, hence you might encounter the following error when executing the python command:
Command 'python' not found
No despair, Python 2 is not installed by default but it is still available for installation.
On the other hand, NumPy is a library for the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays.
Other things you might be interested in installing are GCC, G++, and Go/Golang. Go is a powerful programming language developed by Google which has quickly risen in popularity.
Text Editors and IDEs
This section focuses on code-centric text editors and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) most suitable for you and your programming language.
The editors offer syntax highlighting, have flexible interfaces and provide you with powerful search and navigation tools while the IDEs provide you with comprehensive facilities for software development such as a source code editor, build automation tools and a debugger.
Whether your language preference is Java, Python or other, you can select a text editor or IDE from our list and install it with help of our install guides. Some text editors/IDEs may work better with some specific programming languages so feel free to experiment with various text editors if you do not know yet which one is the most suitable for your needs.
One such example is PyCharm, which is an integrated development environment (IDE) used in computer programming, specifically for the Python language. It provides code analysis, a graphical debugger, an integrated unit tester, integration with version control systems (VCSes), and supports web development with Django as well as Data Science with Anaconda.
File and Package Management
As a System Administrator you may find useful to list the installed packages or list running services on Ubuntu 22.04.
In terms of installation of packages, we recommend installing DEB file on Ubuntu 22.04. A file that has the .DEB file extension is a Debian software package file. They contain software to be installed on Debian or a Debian-based operating system. Ubuntu falls into that category, being based on Debian and capable of executing .DEB files.
In this section, we’ll go over the steps to install a DEB file on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish and talk about some best practices along the way.
System Administration
Conky is an open source tool to monitor the performance of your Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop hence very important for system administrators. It offers a user-friendly dashboard that can be used to monitor CPU, Memory & Disk Usage, and System Cleaner to clean system caches.
Version Control
Git is a distributed version-control system for tracking changes in source code during software development that might be very useful in your work.
Servers and Services
In this section, we outline how to install Samba server on Ubuntu 22.04 to, for example, share user home directories as well as provide read-write anonymous access to selected directories.
Moreover, we will describe the FTP server/client installation and SFTP server installation. Then, we will describe the NTP server installation, which is used for clock synchronization across multiple computers. An NTP server is responsible for keeping a set of computers in sync with each other. On a local network, the server should be able to keep all client systems to within a single millisecond of each other.
After that we will show you how to deploy an SSH server. OpenSSH is the premier connectivity tool for remote login with the SSH protocol. It encrypts all traffic to eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. In addition, OpenSSH provides a large suite of secure tunneling capabilities, several authentication methods, and sophisticated configuration options.
And finally, we will provide you with instructions on how to install the Tor client on Ubuntu 22.04. We’ll show you how to set it up, which includes browser configuration and enabling all of your shell commands to run through Tor’s network.
Data Management
PostgreSQL is a database management system, similar to MySQL in many respects but with some key differences. Like MySQL, it’s commonly hosted on Linux. We’ll show how to run a PostgreSQL server on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish, as well as installing the client version in case you just need to connect to an external PostgreSQL database.
Virtualization
You can set up virtual machines with VMware Workstation Pro on a single physical machine and use them simultaneously with the actual machine.
Alternatively, you can install VirtualBox on your Ubuntu 22.04 system. To extend the functionality of VirtualBox, the VirtualBox Extension Pack is also recommended.
Containerization
In this section, we will take you through installation of Docker and Kubernetes.
Docker is a combination of platform as a service products that use virtualization to provide software in packages called containers which can communicate with each other through well-defined channels.
We also include Kubernetes in this section as it is a leading software in container orchestration. Kubernetes works by managing clusters, which is simply a set of hosts meant for running containerized applications.
Closing Thoughts
These are all our recommendations. If you think this article is missing an important thing to install on Ubuntu 22.04 or you find an error please send your feedback to our forum using the comments and discussion section on the bottom of this page.