 For every Linux user, there are some applications that are absolutely essential most of the time these applications are quite different from person to person. So while I happen to need Kate in live on all of my computers, most people don't need Kate in life. And while I have no need of something like blender on my machine, some people live in blender all day, so on and so forth. Right. For all that being said, I think that there are some applications that are more universal in their requirement. These are applications that almost everyone has to have in some form or fashion. Now, one of the things I'm going to ignore is the browser because I think that the browser just kind of goes without saying everyone needs a web browser. Which one you choose doesn't really matter to me. Frankly, I don't care. I use Firefox. I would recommend you at least try Firefox. I think you'll probably be happy with it. But for a lot of people, Google Chrome is where it's at and they can't be weaned off from it. It's just whatever. Luckily, that is available on Linux. You can download that and use it just like you would on Windows or Mac. But beyond the browser, there are certain applications that I think are absolutely essential. Now, some of these are placeholders. And what I mean by that is that the application itself doesn't actually matter. It's more of the category that matters. So you'll see what I mean as we jump in. So let's go ahead and do that. The first application on the list that I think everyone has to have is a password manager. Now, for the one I'm recommending is Bitwarden and Bitwarden is free and open source. And it's an amazing application. It's cross platform. It has free syncing capability. They don't nickel and dime you on the important features like last pass and one password does. And while there is a subscription fee that you can sign up for, it's $10 a year. You pay $10 a year and it gives you some storage that you can use for secure document storage and stuff like that. It's really not anything that you have to worry about or pay for if you don't want to. All the essential features are there. That's why I like Bitwarden. But if you don't want Bitwarden or other free and open source alternatives out there, things like key pass XC are available, things like end pass I believe is open source. I'm not actually sure about that. I think it used to be open source. I'm not sure if it is anymore. But there are several options. And if you really want to get really nerdy, you can use something like pass, which is a, I think it's GNU pass. It uses it. It's in the terminal and it's really, really nerdy and you would manage all your passwords yourself. But it's still a password manager and there's tons of tools that go along with pass. The reason why a password manager is essential, and I think that this is kind of again universal across even operating systems, is that you can't use the same password for every single thing that you use on the internet, nor should you. So you need some kind of program that will allow you to create really complicated passwords for those things, while still being able to actually, you know, get to those. And that means that you can create a simple or fairly simple master password, which you can remember. And then you can use ultra complicated ones for the important stuff online. Your bank and Facebook and all this stuff, so that you can avoid having a very weak password, which is easy to crack. That's the reason why password managers are important. Also, you don't have to remember passwords that way. You just have to remember one password. So I think that that's probably one of the best benefits of using a password manager. Again, I recommend Bitwarden. Now the next app on the list is again, more of a category. And the app that I'm going to recommend is Thunderbirds. But the category is email client. Now some people are perfectly happy living in a web mail client. I'm never going to be one of those people. And frankly, I don't think most people should be one of those people. You should have something that allows you to at least have some control over your email. So that means being able to download those emails to your computer, so that in case you go over the storage limit or your account gets hacked or your account gets shut down by Google or whatever, you at least have some access to your email. And that means that you need to be able to download it. And one of the applications that can do that is Thunderbird. Now you can also use other applications to do this. Evolution, Geary, there's just several of them out there. If you're interested in one of the terminal, there's one called NeoMut. That's really good. I have a tutorial on how to use that with Gmail. That is one of my very earliest videos. So don't judge the quality, but I'll link that in the cards or the video description below if I remember. But I think that like I said, everyone should use an email client of some kind simply because it does give you at least some control over your email, even if you're using a mainline mainstream email service like Gmail or Hotmail or whatever. Thunderbird again is the recommendation that I'm giving out because it is free open source obviously. But also it is well maintained, which you can't say about all the other email clients. Some of them go years without updates like Geary. Sometimes I think is the one that just sometimes goes ages without updates. So Thunderbird gets a lot of updates. It works really well. It's easy to set up. It can be used with two factor authentication and all this stuff. It just works really well. So I highly recommend Thunderbird. Now the next one is also more of a category. I'm hoping you're sensing a theme here. I want to give a recommendation for each of these, but I don't want to tie anyone into the ones that I prefer. Instead, I want to give them the one I prefer, but also let them know that there are other options. So the third one is a launcher of some kind. Now the vast majority of desktop environments come with a launcher. So I'm not going to say you need to go out and find a third party launcher, but I highly recommend either learning the launcher that comes with your desktop environment or finding a third party one. So for example, I use the crap out of Rofi. Rofi is fantastic and it just does a ton of stuff. You can script for it. You can use it to switch windows. You can use it to shut down your computer with different scripts. You can use it to select emojis. Just a ton of stuff. Rofi is amazing. Rofi doesn't work fantastically in a desktop environment, however. So there are other alternatives. So if you are using plasma, learn how to use K-Runner. K-Runner can be brought up with Alt and Space on most KDE plasma installs. And it's amazing. It has a ton of customization because, you know, KDE, but also it's just really, really good. It's fast. It searches your file system. It can search the web. It does a ton of stuff. On GNOME, you can get to a launcher by hitting the meta key, which is the super key or the window key. It's really simple. You can just use the built-in one. If those two things don't suit your fancy, there are third-party alternatives like you launcher. Like Albert, I think, is the name of the launcher. I'm not sure if it's still maintained. It's the corresponding application to Alfred, which is on the Mac, but it's for Linux, obviously. I'm not sure if that's actually what it's called. I'll look that up and try to leave a link in the video description. But there are several other ones that are really good that are kind of universal and that you can take them no matter what desktop environment slash window manager you're using, and they can work really well. Also, if you don't want to use Rofi and you want something more like that, you could use Dmenu, which is also fantastic. The reason why I think a launcher is essential is because I find it easier to launch applications and things like that by getting into a launcher and searching for those things and then having to search through a list of applications. It's possible that you're used to searching through a list of applications if you're coming from Windows or maybe you're just used to using the start menu search. Most desktop environments allow you to do that as well. But for me, the launcher just makes things more efficient and speedier. So the next one on the list is going to be a little bit different. And this is an actual application. I'm not giving you a category. This one is called Pulse Mixer. I've talked about Pulse Mixer before. And the reason why I think it's important is because if you use Pulse Audio, which most desktop environments and distros still do to some extent, you'll need to at times make sure that you're using the correct devices to input or output audio. And Pulse Mixer makes that really easy. Now, the problem with Pulse Mixer, but it's not a problem, is that it is terminal-based. So it can be a little bit intimidating for people who aren't interested in the terminal. But I prefer it simply because it's actually simpler than its GUI counterpart, which is called Pavu Control. If you are dead set on using a GUI Pavu Control is a good option. But again, it's very complicated. And it can be more intimidating, I think, than Pulse Mixer. Pulse Mixer, which I can actually show you here. This is Pulse Mixer. And basically what this does, it allows you to control volume. It allows you to set different default devices for audio input and output. And it allows you to turn things off if you wanted to turn different inputs and outputs off if you wanted to. You navigate with the keyboard. You can go to input and output with F1 and F2. If you ever get lost, just hit the question mark. It will give you all the key bindings you'll ever need. And there are not a lot of them. Like, this is not a super complicated application at all. It's really easy to understand if you wanted to change something. If, say, you're here and you wanted to change something, hit Enter. It gives you an option to do the things that you can do. Most of the stuff you'll never, ever want to even touch. So if you're using the wrong device or Pulse Audio for whatever reason has changed you over to a device you're not actually supposed to be using, you can get in here, hit Set as Default. It'll switch to the proper device. Once you've highlighted it, obviously, you can obviously also navigate these things with either the arrow keys or the VIM keys. So that is Pulse Mixer. Now, this is what Pavu Control looks like. This is the GUI alternative. And the reason why I say it's more confusing is because there's buttons here that aren't really well labeled. There are little tips, but again, I find it just easier to use the terminal one. And it just, for me, this has always seemed a little bit more complicated than Pulse Mixer does. Now, the one thing I will tell you is that if you're using PipeWire and you may be or you may not even know sometimes Pulse Mixer does not work. It depends on if you're using PipeWire over top of Pulse Audio. If you're just using PipeWire, then chances are it won't work at all and you'll just have to find something different. There are probably PipeWire alternatives out there. I just don't know them because I wouldn't touch PipeWire with a 10-foot pole unless I absolutely had to. So that's just, you know, me. So let's move on to the last one. The last one is a essential application that I think everyone should use. But again, I'm going to make it a category simply so I don't get in trouble. I don't want to piss people off because people are very attached to the certain applications. So I think everyone should find their very own text editor. Now, whether you choose a GUI or a terminal text editor doesn't matter to me, but I think everyone should find one that they're very comfortable with. And the reason why is because as you go through and use Linux longer, you're going to come across files that you need to edit. Configuration files probably being the most likely one. And some people just aren't comfortable in the terminal doing all the stuff in Vim or whatever, and they'll want to use a graphical text editor. There's nothing wrong with that. So I think that right up off the front of learning Linux, you should find a text editor that you are able to use competently. Now, that doesn't really sound like it's that big of a deal, right? It shouldn't be that hard to use a text editor. And it's not. If you use something like Genie or G-Edit or something like that, while those have a lot of features you can get into if you want to, you don't have to get into those things. You can just use it as a standard old text editor. You could also use something like LibreOffice if you really wanted to, but they're not really what I'm talking about when I talk about text editor. There's a difference between a text editor and a word processor. A text editor is going to be more able to edit things like configuration files than something like LibreOffice would because LibreOffice is going to add a whole bunch of stuff into it, like formatting, stuff like that. You're not going to need to get into that if you're editing a configuration file. So the app recommendation that I'm going to give is VIM. So probably a big shock for those of you who watch the channel, but VIM is my favorite text editor. It's amazing, but it's not for everyone. Just like Emacs is not for everyone. So there are hundreds of options out there. I just recommend finding one that you are willing to use and learn how to use at least a little bit so that you know what they are at least. So if you open up Genome and you open up G Edit or whatever it is, and you can use it, you know, it's always there. So if you need to edit a file, you can get in there and make some changes. You know how to save things and so on and so forth. If you're on Plasma, you open up Kate. Kate is the default text editor for Plasma. It's really good. It's also in true Katie fashion. Very complicated. It has a lot of options, stuff like that, bells and whistles that you probably never actually ever need unless you become a developer and start getting into Haskell or something. If you are that person, God bless your soul. But the point is, is that you can open up Kate, use it as a standard text editor. You don't need all that bells and whistles. You just need to know how to save it. And you know, whatever, once you get past that, you need to know basically just that these things exist and then you can use them. If you get into more nerdy aspects of Linux and you start using things like Tiling Window Managers and such like that, you're going to find yourself editing configuration files more and more and you'll find yourself getting more and more attached to certain text editors. So for example, you might get attached to Vim, you might get attached to Emacs, you might get attached to G Editor, Kate or whatever, sublime text maybe. So I found as I get more and more into Linux, the more and more attached I get to Vim and I know many people, the more and more they get into Linux, the more attached they are to Emacs, you know, so on and so forth. So I highly recommend finding yourself a text editor that you're comfortable with. That's the fifth one. And that is it for this video. If you have essential Linux applications that everybody should use, I highly recommend leaving those in the comment section below. Don't link to them. Just give the names. Things that you think that every single Linux user should absolutely have. I would love to see other people's recommendations for this because I know that there are many more than just the five that I listed off and several of these that I gave were kind of vague. I just kind of give categories for them and each category has many different applications that I could have chosen for those application recommendations. So make sure you leave a comment in the comments section below. Make sure you hit that like button. I really do appreciate that. If you haven't subscribed yet already, I make content pretty much every single day of the week regarding Linux and open source software. 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