Enhancing Your Dual Boot System

Applications for both systems.

There are many applications out there that can be used in both Ubuntu and Windows 7 and many of them may work better or be more efficient than the ones I am going to write about here. The reason I choose all of these are they are very stable, user-friendly, widely user recommended in each of their class of applications. You may or may not want to use them. Several of the suggested applications are already installed on Ubuntu build so you will not have to do anything but adjust there preference for user comfort and unison between Ubuntu and Windows 7. On all installs I choose to do the generic install. Next, Next, Next and then finally Finish.

Firefox

Firefox is probably going to be the easiest of the three to setup. For Ubuntu it is already installed in the Image you loaded. For Windows 7 you will have to use IE to download it. Google search or be lazy and click my link. Firefox in my view is better browser than IE for the simple fact that is has better security than any version of IE that I have used. In my experience as well is that it is usually a lot more stable environment; as well as an easier more user friendly when dealing with add on or adjusting settings features. Also another great thing is the different themes that you can use.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird is a tool used to browse web mail accounts. To install it for Windows 7 you need to go to this download site and install it. Once its finished installing you will need to connect it to whatever web email accounts you want. This is an easy  to do walk through on the first opening of Thunderbird. I personally couldn’t get it to work with a Yahoo account but had no problems with none of my other emails. I have 3 email accounts currently working in Thunderbird. It’s very simply laid out as and easy to navigate and allows you to view your mail all at once without even having to open a browser.

To get this installed on the Ubuntu image you need to use the Synaptic Package Manager to search for it and then mark it for download. Allow it to download and then on first opening it will ask you do the same configuration setup for you web email accounts like you did in windows.

Open Office

Open Office is what I suggest you use as your general day to day document use. There are other open Document applications out there but most I have some to are either not very user friendly or have compatibility issues with Microsoft word.

Open Office is going to be the most time consuming of the five application installs, as it will take the longest to download. It is already installed in Ubuntu so you will only have to do this in Windows 7. To install the application browse to OpenOffice.org and choose the top most download.

Open Office is fully comparable and interchangeable with its documents as far as I see with Microsoft Office. I flip between the two regularly due to having Microsoft Office at work and Open Office at home. With Open Office you get a Text Document (Word), Presentation (PowerPoint), Spreadsheet (Excel), Database (Access), Drawing (Paint), and Formulas (something I never use).

Open Office is already installed on Ubuntu but its a lite version containing only Dictionary, Evolution Mail and Calendar, Presentation, Spreadsheet, Word Processor. If you want you can uninstall it and use Synaptic Package Manager to install a similar install as the Windows 7.

Gimp

Gimp is a Drawing manipulation tool such as Photoshop is for Adobe. I have just recently begun to use this tool and have found it to be very useful, easy to use, and pretty powerful. You can find it at gimp.org. The only issues I had was it didn’t not default its save location to the Data location that we had established as our libraries folder locations. But after i went here manually navigating the save window it remembered it and I didn’t think about it again. This application is already installed in the Ubuntu so its a Windows 7 install only.

If its not installed for what ever reason you can install it via Synaptic Package Manager or by the following command line directions.

For Ubuntu -> open terminal,

$sudo apt-get install gimp

Insert root password

Press y for yes

Done installed,

VLC Media Player

This tool is almost a must. VLC is a media player that seems to have no ends to what it can view, play or do. To get it installed and working on Windows 7 download the installer from VLC allow it to run and install. The generic install should work for almost all but I have heard that some codex aren’t selected so if your wanting to select every supported codex do the custom. Once installed right click on any of the items your wanting view or listen to and till it to play with VLC Media player.

To get it installed on Ubuntu you will have to go to the Synaptic Package Manager. Since you already have your repositories opened up just do a search for VLC look in the list you will see VLC Media Player as one of your options and mark it for download. When you do this it will also enable all the needed patches and plug-ins. Allow it to install then load up a movie and enjoy! You can also install via command line by these instructions.

For Ubuntu -> open terminal

$sudo apt-get install vlc

Insert root password press enter

Press y for yes

Done installed

Closing thoughts.

This is just a small chunk of the things you can do to unite both Windows 7 and Ubuntu to run on the same box. I have helped you install two operating systems which share the same data storage space and have similar applications.This a great platform to build both in experience and knowledge of how they work similar and different when dealing with similar situations.