Actually, the panels are part of GNOME desktop environment and Ubuntu comes with GNOME by default. What you have to understand is that Linux has several desktop environments like GNOME, KDE, XFCE and many more. So if you prefer something different for whatever reasons, you have a choice. You can visit their sites to see what they look like and how they are different.
A screenshot of my desktop. Look at the top and bottom panels.Back on topic. The programs or applications menu is located at the top left corner. It is a dropdown menu which lists programs in categories. Here are the screenshots:
When you install a program, it automatically goes to its group. Sometimes after installing a program, it doesn't show up immediately in the menu. You can refresh the panel by entering this in the terminal: "killall gnome-panel"
The names of the programs are mostly self-explanatory. Leafpad is not installed by default. I replaced gedit (like Notepad but more advanced) with this because its lighter and simpler.
The usual list of time-waster games you need. There are more games (or programs) you can install from the Add/Remove menu at the bottom of the list (more on that later). My favorite is Mines (like WinMine).
F-Spot is a photo manager that can automatically catalog your photos when you attach your digital cameras, add tags, organize, etc. GIMP is like Photoshop. The other two programs I don't use and know it only by their name.
Everybody knows Firefox (this is 3.0 Beta) and Thunderbird (I replaced Evolution, the MS Outlook counterpart, since it is too big and have features I don't use). Transmission is a really good Bittorrent Client.
Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice productivity suite - word processor, spreadsheet, presentation. No need to buy or install a separate MS Office suite. Evolution is part of the Office menu but as mentioned above, I removed it and replaced it with Thunderbird. Gnumeric is a lightweight spreadsheet program. I installed it since it loads faster than OpenOffice Calc (Spreadsheet) and has the basic features I need.
The sound and video menu names are self-explanatory. In addition, I installed Audacious and Audacity. Audacious is like WinAmp but better for playing MP3s etc. Audacity is for editing, encoding, etc. audio files. Rhythmbox is like iTunes.
The bottom of the list is the Add/Remove menu where you can find a menu with hundreds of programs ready to install with one click. You can install or uninstall several programs at a time. Just check which ones you want to install and uncheck the ones you want to remove and let the program do its thing. This is a good thing that is missing in Windows.
Really! It's that simple. You don't need to search the web and download programs (are you sure they don't have adware?) or pop-in CDs (make sure you know the CD Key or Serial Number). No need to install one program at a time and reboot. Forget all about that. This is how it is supposed to be done.
You can filter by Category, by Popularity, or by support type and search by name.
That's it for now.
