Customise Ubuntu
Discover new software. Change settings. Install a new desktop (or three).
U
buntu (and most other desktop Linux flavours) have been designed to be intuitive and easy to learn. However, sooner or later you’ll probably want to change some things around.
For example, we think
Rhythmbox
is great. It’s been the default music player in Ubuntu since the very beginning (with only a brief sabbatical while
Banshee
took its place in 2011). But with its Client Side Decorated window it looks dated, and can’t connect to popular (albeit proprietary) streaming services so we might want to look at alternatives. By this point we’re assuming you’ve installed Ubuntu, and enjoyed its new look Flutter-built installer.
Fire up the Ubuntu Software application, scroll down to the list of categories and select Music and Audio. You’ll see a selection of audio programs, most of which we’ve never heard of. You will, however, find the official Spotify and Audible programs, as well as unofficial players for Deezer, YouTube, Google Play Music and Apple Music. If you prefer something even more nostalgic, you’ll also find Foobar2000, DeaDBeef-vs (a minimal GTK player and glorious hex reference) as well as myriad text-based music players. Install Spotify (or whatever else takes your fancy) by hitting the green button.
Most applications in the Software application are shipped as Snap packages. You can see the delivery mechanism in the Source box in the top-right. Snap is Canonical’s self-contained packaging format which (like Flatpak, which is a similar effort) enables developers to easily ship software without having to worry about distro-specific packaging and which versions of which libraries to ship. Snaps also run in a confined sandbox (unless you give them permission to otherwise) so they can’t access any files or hardware they don’t need to.