Top 10 Best Linux Software Of Year 2020

Linux is an open source operating system and now has more user-friendly distributions like Ubuntu, Linux mint etc. You might have selected distribution but are confused for applications. A clever choice according to your requirements and interest is important.

Choices may vary as many good applications comes for several category like Home and office, Image tools, Multimedia, disk and file tools, Desktop and system, Security and privacy, internet and Email, Programming, Games etc. Here I am mentioning some of the best from most of the relevant categories you might be interested in.

Home and Office

• LibreOffice is a free, open-source and cross-platform full office suite. It is nothing but a fork of old OpenOffice. It comes with several programs like word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress), database (Base), graphics (Draw) and math editing components.

It supports VBA macro, import and export documents in many formats like RTF (Rich text format), OpenOffice.org XML format, MS Office 2007 and 2010 format. Life is made easy as you can import files from MS Works and Lotus Word Pro, export PDF files and images.

Multimedia

• VLC is a terrific Media Player (Video).It is most popular open source as it can play anything except a broken file, without downloading any external codec packs. It can play all five region codes; can take screenshots of your videos even during DVD playback. It comes with hell lot number of plugins, extensions and skins.
• Amarok is highly powerful and customizable music player and organizer. It is a great music manager for the KDE desktop but work well for other platforms too. It has highly intuitive interface. It supports for collection management, bookmarking, dynamic playlists; file tracking, integrated web services and much more, you name it. Best thing about Amarok is it is powerful yet so easy to use. Excellent choice to play and organize your music the way you want.

System and Privacy

• KeePassX is free open source password manager to store encrypted passwords. All you need to do is to remember one single master password and you can access many use names and other private information which is saved in one database, stored on your system. It has more features like defining titles and icons, grouping and sorting entries. It uses a file format which is compatible to KeePass (Password Safe for Windows).

Internet and Email

• Google Chrome is extremely fast, easy to use, ultraclean and intuitive web browser. It offers Omnibox (an all -purpose bar) along with an Incognito window or private browsing mode. Sandbox tabs provides more control and security over the browser. It is the only browser with built-in flash support and you don’t have to install Adobe flash externally and has built in support for PDF. It provides silent updates and also has Malware blocking feature. Translation feature for non-native language sites is wonderful.
• Thunderbird is the most popular open source cross platform News and Email client. It can manage multiple accounts including emails, newsgroups. It is expandable and customizable through add-ons. It supports encryption and has built in spam filtering and RSS feed reader. It provides message color coding, fast email search, spell check as you type, automatic updates and the ability to view your email in conversational threads.
• Pidgin (formerly GAIM) is an “Instant messaging and Video conferencing client app”. It has simple user interface. It is a multi-protocol client and supports several IM networks like AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr etc.

Games

• Urban Terror is a popular first person shooter game. It is fast and intense. It enhances the game-play with elements like powerslides and wallhops. There are five different types of games with plenty of players and that too without waiting.
• Phun is a 2D sandbox game. It has Physics with a fun twist and you get many options to create things. You become an inventor during the play, you can start from scratch and the same time can choose from previously made inventions.

Disk and Files tools

• GPartition is the free partition manager for GENOME. It helps to create, resize, move, delete, reformat, or check partitions. It can be run from live CD or inside installed systems. It is robust, reliable and safe. It supports both NTFS and FAT32.

List is actually long but thought to share top 10 at this moment. If you are looking for some of these categories, it will be wise to consider above applications. All the best!