We’ve covered the basics, so now it’s time to perform the final steps needed to get Ubuntu W ready for action. You may want to integrate online accounts – for example, you might want to have Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive files available in the file manager. Or receive desktop notifications for Gmail, Microsoft or other email accounts. You can even integrate with MS Exchange or Kerberos resources if you want to connect to corporate environments. All these (and more) are available in the Online Accounts section of the Settings app.
Earlier we mentioned installing new applications and introduced the idea of repositories, but we didn’t give you the whole story. The traditional repo system meant that apps were packaged by distribution packaging teams, rather than the app developers themselves. This ensured compatibility with that distro, but also meant that programs in the repos lagged behind what you’d find if you got the source code (from the likes of GitHub or Gitlab) and compiled it yourself. Over the past few years, a couple of new technologies have emerged that make it easier for app developers to release their wares in a distro-agnostic manner, either by including all the required libraries (this is how AppImages work) or by building against standardised runtime bundles. While Flatpak (and https://flathub.org store) is gaining popularity for GUI apps, Canonical is pushing ahead with its own format – Snaps.