After you left behind windows and joined Ubuntu world, you have been searching for ways, which would enable you to customize your Ubuntu in the way you felt. Ok , let’s start :

You need to change the way your Ubuntu looks, bored with the same old gnome interface. Try KDE desktop manager, which is more stylish and more similar to the windows environment with K-menu and much more. Kde is much more memory hungry than gnome, but works nice. To install kde, issue the following commands in the gnome-terminal.

sudo apt-get install kde

Your entire Ubuntu is transformed to the all new kde. Ok, what you want more ?. Let’s try a media player much better than Movie Player. Vlc player would be a wise choice, which offers to play almost any media format available under the sun. Issue the following command :

sudo apt-get install vlc

Now you have a nice media player and let’s try something for instant messaging. Pidgin is a nice application which takes care of all your messaging needs.Pidgin offers features like multiple account management, and easy access to your networks.

sudo apt-get install pidgin

Crazy of irc networks, time to play with X-chat, one of the best chat clients available.

sudo apt-get install xchat

Now you want is a nice editor, capable of auto-intending and auto-saving. Emacs would be great for you, it even takes care of almost everything related to programming languages.

Rhythmbox is a nice audio player, but if dissatisfied with it, try out amarok. Amarok is a much advanced audio-player with a flashy appearance.

sudo apt-get install amarok

Next we get in to firefox tweaking. There are tons of firefox addons available for free. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could surf internet faster, get faster firefox addon from mozilla.com. Video download helper is another great addon which enables you to download videos from websites which only stream, like youtube.com. Flashgot is a nice download manager for your firefox browser. You can also try flashblock and adblockplus if, you need to get rid of all those ugly ads and flash files, which eat away your bandwidth. Firefox with a nice appearance is a great idea with persona. Grab your favourite addons from here.

Now you need is a nice partition manager, which enables you to resize, format,create or delete partitions. Gparted would be perfect for you.

sudo apt-get install gparted

CD/DVD burning is fun with k3b, one of the best cd/dvd burning solutions available for linux.

sudo apt-get install k3b

Need a backup manager for linux. Consider backintime, a simple and easy to use backup manager for linux.

I think, this is enough for almost everyone, if you want more consider reading applications to make your kde more powerful . Feel free to post your comments.