On the Steam website, look for the Steam icon on a circle next to the game, indicating Steam OS support. You can browse the Steam OS + Linux category on the Steam store to see the games available for Linux. While Steam itself runs on Linux, not every game on Steam is available on Linux. Valve’s popular Steam gaming service also runs on Linux. You might not find the exact software you’re after, but it may be available on the web, or you may find a good alternative. If you have an application you love and depend on, it’s worth searching online to see whether it’s available on Linux.
Linux desktop environments come with a collection of software. You’ll get all the standard utilities like a file manager, PDF viewer, text editor, video player, and archiving utility by default. For example, the popular VLC media player and VirtualBox virtual machine program both run on Linux. Other common open-source utilities do run on Linux. The desktop version of Microsoft Outlook isn’t available, but you can use Mozilla Thunderbird and a simple Calendar app, or just web-based email and calendaring. Or you can use the web-based versions of many online music and video services.
You can run other media center programs like the Rhythmbox application included with Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions. Linux distributions often include other simple media tools like the Shotwell photo manager and PiTiVi video editor, too.Īpple’s iTunes doesn’t run on Linux, either. (You can also access Office Online in a web browser for free.)Īdobe doesn’t produce Photoshop for Linux, but you can use the open-source GIMP image editor instead. Linux distributions usually include LibreOffice instead. Microsoft doesn’t offer Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Linux. However, many open-source alternatives are.
Most of the desktop applications you use on Windows or Mac are probably not available for Linux.
RELATED: Linux Apps Are Now Available in Chrome OS Stable, But What Does That Mean? Open-Source Desktop Applications If an application you want to run has a web version, you can use it on Linux.
Linux doesn’t support some older browser plug-ins like Silverlight, but those are no longer widely used on the web.Īs the desktop PC world has shifted more and more to online, web-based software, Linux has become easier to use. It’s included with Chrome, just like on Windows, and you can install it separately for Firefox or Chromium. Netflix now works normally in both Firefox and Chrome on Linux thanks to added support for its DRM.Īdobe Flash has become less common on the web but is also available for Linux. Pretty much everything inside your web browser should “just work” in Linux. Google also offers an official version of Google Chrome for Linux, and you can even get an “unbranded” open-source version of Chrome named Chromium. Most Linux distributions include Mozilla Firefox as the default web browser.