[Coreyoliseffect]

I have recently stepped into the world of Linux (Ubuntu) and I must say that I am hooked. The only reason that I will keep my main rig on Windows is just simply me being lazy. A little background about why I am posting this is because I am an ex WoW player. Ubuntu really reminds me of WoW and its UI features. I was a big fan of downloading mods/addons to change the look and feel/functionality of my WoW. That being said I have finally gotten ready to try and start messing around with how Ubuntu looks and feels. I am having some trouble finding a good source that adequately describes and shows what the different addons for Ubuntu do. Therefore I am reaching out to all of you fellow Linux users.
What are some of your favorite addons or sites that you use to decide what addons you want to try out?
When posting your favorite addon(s) if you could tell me why I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

EDIT:Thanks for the list of addons. I just wanted to makes them a little easier to get to. Keep them coming!

Favorite Addons For Linux

File Sharing Addons

Need suggestions. Please feel free to post and I will add the ones that you like to this list.

Fun Addons

Cowsay

Cowsay is a program which generates ASCII pictures of a cow with a message. It can also generate pictures using pre-made images of other animals.

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowsay#External_links
Suggested by I.M.O.G. in post #2.

Information Security Addons

Grsync

Grsync is used to synchronize folders, files and make backups.

URL: http://www.opbyte.it/grsync/

rsnapshot

rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems.

URL: www.rsnapshot.org

Look and Feel

Burg-Manager

Burg-manager is an intuitive interface that simplify installation and configuration of the BURG bootloader. Burg-manager allows to install many beautiful themes from a big gallery.

URL: http://ubuntuguide.net/decorate-grub...r-gui-for-burg
Suggested by: Aledine in post #102

Compiz

Compiz is a compositing manager, which means that it enhances the overall user interaction by adding fancy effects to your windows, from drop shadows to awesome desktop effects like the Desktop Cube or the Expo view.
Compiz can also be a window manager, which means that it is the software between you and your desktop apps. It enables you to move or resize windows, to switch workspaces, to switch windows easily (using alt-tab or so), and so on.

URL: http://www.compiz.org/
Suggested by Mario1 in post #72.

Ubuntu Tweak

Ubuntu Tweak is an application to config Ubuntu easier for everyone. It provides many useful desktop and system options that the default desktop environment doesn't provide.

I just recently found this addon in a search to change the look of my login screen. I have already fallen in love with it. I would suggest that any first time user check this app out.
URL: http://ubuntu-tweak.com/
Suggested by Coreyoliseffect in post #15.

Network Addons

EtherApe

EtherApe is a graphical network monitor for Unix modeled after etherman. Featuring link layer, ip and TCP modes, it displays network activity graphically. Hosts and links change in size with traffic. Color coded protocols display.
It supports Ethernet, FDDI, Token Ring, ISDN, PPP and SLIP devices. It can filter traffic to be shown, and can read traffic from a file as well as live from the network.

URL: http://etherape.sourceforge.net/
Suggested by: I.M.O.G in post #2

iftop

iftop does for network usage what top(1) does for CPU usage. It listens to network traffic on a named interface and displays a table of current bandwidth usage by pairs of hosts. Handy for answering the question "why is our ADSL link so slow?".

URL: http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/iftop/
Suggested by mbently in post #6.

ndiff

Ndiff is a tool to aid in the comparison of Nmap scans. Specifically, it takes two Nmap XML output files and prints the differences between them: hosts coming up and down, ports becoming open or closed, and things like that. Ndiff can produce output in human-readable text or machine-readable XML formats. Many people like to scan their networks regularly (daily, weekly, etc.) and then use ndiff to easily detect any changes.

URL: http://nmap.org/ndiff/
Suggested by dropadrop in post #16.

NetStat

netstat (network statistics) is a command-line tool that displays network connections (both incoming and outgoing), routing tables, and a number of network interface statistics.

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netstat
Suggested by I.M.O.G. in post #7.

Ntop

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime.

URL: http://nmap.org/

SYYSSTAT

Includes four groups of monitoring tools (sar / sadc / sadf, iostat, mpstat, pidstat) for global system performance analysis.

There is a more detailed description of the features located at the site.
URL: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.godard/index.html

Productivity Addons

esniper

esniper is a lightweight ebay sniping tool.

URL: http://esniper.sourceforge.net/
URL: http://packages.debian.org/sid/esniper

FlexGet

FlexGet is a multipurpose automation tool for content like torrents, nzbs, podcasts, comics, etc.

URL: http://flexget.com/
Install Tutorial: http://flexget.com/wiki/Install

Gimp

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

URL: http://www.gimp.org/
Suggested by: I.M.O.G in post #2

Go-oo
Description: Alternate version of Open Office. Please see site for more detailed description.
URL: http://go-oo.org/
Suggested by: I.M.O.G. in post #2

Guake

Guake is a top-down terminal for Gnome (in the style of Yakuake for KDE, Tilda or the terminal used in Quake).

URL: http://guake.org/
Suggested by: Stratus_ss in post #109

Prism

Prism is an application that lets users split web applications
out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop

URL: http://prism.mozillalabs.com/

Screen

Screen is a moderately complex program that emulates a terminal. The feature it is best known for is the ability to disconnect and reconnect to screen sessions, which very gracefully survive logoffs.

URL: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Screen

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.

URL: http://www.virtualbox.org/
Suggested by: I.M.O.G. in post #2

Software Exchange Addons

Deluge

Deluge is a lightweight, Free Software, cross-platform BitTorrent client.

URL: http://deluge-torrent.org/
Suggested by I.M.O.G. in post #2.

Storage Addons

NCDU (NCurses Disk Usage)

A disk usage analyzer with an ncurses interface, aimed to be run on a remote server where you don't have an entire gaphical setup, but have to do with a simple SSH connection.

URL: http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu

System Monitoring Addons

Conky

Conky is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any information on your desktop.

URL: http://wiki.conky.be/index.php/Main_Page
Suggested by I.M.O.G. in post #2.

GNOME Sensors Applet

GNOME Sensors Applet is an applet for the GNOME Panel to display readings from hardware sensors, including CPU temperature, fan speeds and voltage readings under Linux.

URL: http://sensors-applet.sourceforge.net/

htop

This is htop, an interactive process viewer for Linux. It is a text-mode application (for console or X terminals) and requires ncurses.

URL: http://htop.sourceforge.net/

Tips and Tricks

Apt-fast and Axel script

The apt-fast script I have created is a little shellscript that increases the speed of apt-get by many times. You need to have the axel download accelerator installed, which is a simple, short process, but everything else is extremely straight forward. I started out downloading the upgrades for Kubuntu, at 32kb/s. Not terrible, but not that great. When I was done with the script here, I was getting up to ~850kb/s. That is great, huh?

URL: http://www.mattparnell.com/projects/...-upgrades.html
Suggested by: Aledine in post #102

BASH

Bash is a shell/programming language made by the GNU Project.

URL: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bash#History_search
Suggested by: I.M.O.G in post #62

Favorite Websites

http://gnome-look.org/

Description: Source for addons to change the look and feel of your GNOME based desktop.

GNU
URL:http://www.gnu.org/
Description: Info about GNU.
*Sent an email to the website's creators about more content and a banner like the one above.*

[I.M.O.G.]

cowsay - lets you make a cow say stuff from the CLI
etherape - gives you a graphical view of your network activity
deluge - excellent bittorent client
conky+lua - very cool overlaid text on your desktop giving you realtime system stats
virtualbox - good virtualization
gimp - everything I need, not an adobe product
go-oo - different version of openoffice, not an MS product

[mbentley]

if you use gnome, i'd suggest 'sensors-applet' which will add an applet to show your system temps (might even show GPU for certain cards). seems to work on nearly anything i have installed it on.

i know there are better tools, but i still use mrtg to monitor my system. here is mine as an example:
http://home.mbentley.net/mrtg/

[I.M.O.G.]

gnome-look.org has been useful in the past for appearance based stuff

You want to look at different Window Decorators if you want to really change things - the default window decorator is GTK. Emerald gives you some distinctly different options.

[Trombe]

htop - to replace top (has more features)
Enable multiverse, restricted, and partner repositories in Ubuntu.

[mbentley]

speaking of top, another application i have found very useful is 'iftop'. it shows all current network connections on an interface. i've found it pretty helpful at times.

[I.M.O.G.]

Eever used netstat on windows? Is it similar?

[mbentley]

here is an example of iftop:



of course you can enable more information using other switches to show port numbers and traffic between specific hosts and whatnot but that is the default output with port information displayed

*edit: changed screen shot to show output of 'iftop -P'

[I.M.O.G.]

Installed, very cool. Thx.

[Stratus_ss]

Also installed,
I use iotop all the time myself, but iftop will be handy also

[ihrsetrdr]

Originally Posted by Trombe

htop - to replace top (has more features)
Enable multiverse, restricted, and partner repositories in Ubuntu.

Originally Posted by mbentley

speaking of top, another application i have found very useful is 'iftop'. it shows all current network connections on an interface. i've found it pretty helpful at times.

Thanks, always looking for handy tools to use in Terminal.

How 'bout nmap http://nmap.org/

scans network and displays "interesting ports"(open) on LAN machines.

[petteyg359]

IMHO, netstat is much more useful than iftop.

Every overclocker on Linux should have the latest lm_sensors and kernel (for sensor drivers). lshw is also useful.

[I.M.O.G.]

And lshw-gui on top of that is good too!

[Coreyoliseffect]

Are there any more that we could add to the list. I am slowly trying them out as I go along.

[Coreyoliseffect]

I just found an amazing app. Ubuntu-tweak. Why did noone tell me of this before?!?!? This has made changing Ubuntu's look and feel really easy. Check it out! I have added to the list up top under the Look and Feel section.

[dropadrop]

Originally Posted by ihrsetrdr

Thanks, always looking for handy tools to use in Terminal.

How 'bout nmap http://nmap.org/

scans network and displays "interesting ports"(open) on LAN machines.

The newest versions of nmap also have a handy feature, ndiff. You can output a scan result to xml and then run diffs between different scans. I use it to notice if somebody messed up our production firewall configuration (again). So I just trigger it from cron and the script sends me the diff result weekly...

[dropadrop]

Originally Posted by Coreyoliseffect

Are there any more that we could add to the list. I am slowly trying them out as I go along.

sysstat

[ihrsetrdr]

Grsync is a nice GUI frontend for rsync

http://www.opbyte.it/grsync/

[Coreyoliseffect]

Awesome! I got those last few added up there. Thanks for all the help. This is really helping me get an idea of what addons are really useful and which are just fakers. I had to add a new category for the Grsync addon. Not really sure what the title should be. Any thoughts? Keep them rolling in!

[I.M.O.G.]

grsync should go under network addons - its used for synchronizing files remotely.