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Did the open source community invent the app store? Maybe not using that exact terminology but, as with so many things, there’s little doubt open source platforms originated the underlying technology and showed big business how things could be done. Debian’s package manager, APT, broke fresh ground nearly two decades ago with its unified system designed to get software onto an operating system  including catalogues of software, complete with descriptions that could be searched. Indeed, APT still serves as an example today, and Ubuntu’s subsequent rise to Linux desktop dominance couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the ease of installing software via Synaptic, which simply provides a GUI front-end for APT. In recent years open source software management has evolved yet again and on most popular distributions you’ll now find software managers akin to the app stores found on proprietary platforms. These do two things above and beyond mere package manager GUIs of old: they hide the mechanics of installation so the user simply sees little more than a progress bar, and they editorialise apps just like any other app store. You’ll find full descriptions of the most popular apps, for example, and even screenshots. This is far better than the single sentence/paragraph that used to accompany apps in the old days, and lets you see what you’re getting before clicking the install button.

Below we take a look at eight gems found via the Software Manager app included with Linux Mint, which is arguably the most popular desktop version of Linux in use today. We’re interested in GUI apps, rather than command-line, and also in system apps that simply make life easier. We used the latest version of Mint throughout, specifically 17.1 Rebecca. However, most (if not all) of the software discussed is available via the software/package managers of other distros such as Ubuntu or SUSE, or via earlier releases of Linux Mint.

Even just ten years ago the idea of a dedicated font manager app for Linux seemed unlikely, but FontMatrix is just one of a handful of offerings now available. Like similar tools on other operating systems, the app aims to work as both a font manager and sampler, allowing you to add and manage fonts (including grouping them together for ease of installation/removal), and also sample them to see if they’re right for the task at hand. The app opens to a list of installed fonts and double-clicking any opens sample text for viewing. This can be changed to anything of your choosing via the Samples pop-up list at the bottom of the screen. You can also switch to viewing a chart of glyphs or technical information about the font. Clicking the Playground option on the View menu opens a proto-text editor into which you can type to sample the font live, and there’s even a print option.

The Activation tab, which is visible when you're viewing a font, lets you turn the font on or off, and fonts can also be tagged for ease of searching. Clicking File > Export Font Book will output a font sample PDF, which you can then print out for quick reference. What's more, the inverse option (found on the Service menu), Find a Font Using Raster Sample, lets you identify a font from a scan or screenshot. Now that's a neat feature! This only scratches the surface of what’s on offer in FontMatrix, which is also available for Windows and Mac. It would certainly be pushing it to describe it as an app that’s entirely user-friendly, but there’s no getting around the fact that the managing of fonts requires some knowledge and is inherently non-trivial.

Open source multimedia has come on leaps and bounds thanks in no small part to frameworks like ffmpeg and avconv. However, while offering Swiss Army Knifelike abilities to do just about anything, you still need to understand the technology and also be a wiz at the command line to do just about anything with such tools. WinFF, however, is a graphical frontend for media conversion via ffmpeg and avconv. Even more usefully, though, it contains presets that (at least according to the developers) aim to hit the 'sweet spot' for each individual codec. In other words, they aim to provide the best quality, while also keeping an eye on file size. Should you want or need to, however, you can click the Options button to tweak things to suit your individual requirements. First things first, however: to get the most out of the app you’ll need to install libavcodec-extra alongside it. This is also offered by Mint Software Manager, though. Once installed, using the app is a matter of selecting what type of file you want to create via the conversion  everything from basic audio and video are listed, to devicespecific output types such as Android (or even BlackBerry) and then selecting the preset type. Then just drag the file onto the window, click the Preview button to do a dry run to see if the conversion actually works, and then click the Convert button to output the file. Linux desktop apps have to balance on a knife edge between the simplicity inherent in a non-command-line app, yet also offer the power and range power users demand. Arguably, WinFF ticks all the necessary boxes and should be considered a mandatory installation.

It’s often the small apps that make using an operating system so much more producive and Artha is an excellent example. Chiefly it’s a dictionary and thesaurus app that contains an offline copy of the excellent WordNet database created at Princeton University. Just type into the Query field the word you’re interested in (an approximation usually does the trick if you can’t spell it, though) and you’ll see a definition of the word at the top of the Artha window and synonyms, derivatives, 'kind of', 'kinds', and other types of thesaurus look-ups below. You can even use regular expressions if you want to look up parts of words  useful when you're stuck doing a crossword, for example although this also requires the installation of the wordnet-sense-index package. Handily, Artha quits to the system tray, where it remains ready for use at any time. This means it’s able to be summoned into action by a hotkey combination (the default being Ctrl+Alt+W), which lets you select a word in any other app and tap it in order to automatically activate Artha as a pop-up window, with the definition and thesaurus look-up shown. Backwards and forwards buttons at the top left of the window let you move through your look-up history, and are the icing on the cake of a very useful and surprisingly powerful app.

If you’re going to use a download manager to optimise online file grabbing then it makes sense to use one that’s fully featured, and with FatRat it might be quicker to mention things it can’t do rather than what it can. Out of the box it supports HTTP and FTP downloads, along with BitTorrent, but a plugin structure (click Settings > Extensions) expands support to various popular websites like YouTube, DailyMotion and many more.The app can be used in a variety of ways but arguably the easiest method is to click FatRat > Display the Drop-Box, which adds a floating icon to the desktop onto which file links can be dragged and dropped from browser windows. Leave this in a corner of the screen and FatRat is essentially always accessible. Alternatively, you can open the app and click the Add button to manually add download URLs, or activate the clipboard monitor feature via the Settings menu that will automatically sense any downloadable URLs that you copy to it. FatRat can also monitor website RSS feeds for links, by which certain websites let you know when new downloads are available to grab. Like similar apps FatRat offers a number of remote control options, including via a web interface (including HTTPS for security) and via Jabber chat. Download and uploads can be throttled, and also scheduled, again via the Settings app. There’s little doubt that FatRat is all you’ll ever need when it comes to downloading. We were a little sad to see that some of the plugins are out of date, but this didn’t really detract from the sheer usefulness of the app.

In our modern security climate password managers are to be considered mandatory rather than optional, and KeePassX ticks most boxes Linux users require: it’s open source and uses the same open source database technology as the popular KeePass Password Safe for Windows, so therefore uses 256-bit AES (Rijndael) or Twofish encryption. It also stores your password data locally rather than online. KeePassX is also mercifully simple to use even if you haven’t used similar apps in the past. Upon running the app for the first time the first step is to create a database, which can be done via the File menu. Databases can be protected by passwords/phrases, and/or via a key file that KeePassX will generate for you. You should then click File > Save to write the database to disk, before adding new entries by clicking Entries > Add New Entry. Passwords can be generated from within KeePassX and a very neat feature is that they’re obscured by asterisks, meaning that you never see them  useful protection against the risk of root kits or even somebody looking over your shoulder. Entries can be grouped for ease of organisation too. Alas, there isn’t a quick and easy browser plugin for KeePassX, but the Auto-Type feature is just as good and can autocomplete passwords on a keystroke that you set within the app (more details can be found in the KeePassX handbook, available on the Help menu). Using Auto-Type rather than a browser plugin has the advantage that you can also enter your passwords into apps other than browsers, such as email clients. KeePassX is an impressive, yet ultimately easy-to-use application, that we again  think should be considered a mandatory addition to any Linux setup.

The field of duplicate file detection has been surprisingly fruitful for app developers on other operating system platforms. The promise does seem inviting: by removing identical files you’ve cloned without realising, such as photos or videos, you can potentially recover gigabytes of disk space. FSlint short for File System Lint  brings this feature to Linux, along with a handful of other useful file system scanning tools that can help correct errors and generally ensure your system functions without hiccoughs. Using the app is simply a matter of selecting the type of scan you want from the tabbed list at the left, and then clicking the Find button underneath. In addition to finding duplicate files, FSlint can also create a list of installed packages (useful for seeing if any space can be freed up by uninstalling), as well as scanning for bad names (those with @ in them, for example), name clashes (files with identical names yet different contents), temp files, bad symlinks (links that point to files that have been deleted), bad IDs (files with invalid owner info), empty directories, non-stripped binaries (files that still include debugging info and are therefore larger than needed), and redundant whitespaces (spaces and/or tabs in filenames). Results are shown in a list in the main app window, and buttons beneath offer a variety of clean-up options, including deleting and making a copy of the file in order to see if it really is possible to remove it without causing damage. FSlint is powerful and shouldn’t be used without forethought, but it’s also incredibly and uniquely useful and provides access to functionality formerly off limits to those without serious command line chops.

A swap-in replacement for the file manager copy system, UltraCopier aims to provide control over and information about all types of file copy procedure. Although usable as a standalone app, getting the most from UltraCopier involves integrating it with the Nemo file browser, which also means adding in and setting up a third-party script available from github.com/lestcape/Nemo-UltraCopier. There you’ll also find instructions on using the script, which is pretty simple and only needs to be done once. Once these steps have been undertaken, copying any files to the clipboard and then attempting to paste them via right-clicking will show an additional option: Paste with UltraCopier. This will then show the UltraCopier monitor and dialogue box with additional features (principally including better error and collision management)  in additional to the usual opportunity to skip or overwrite existing files, you can choose to rename them, for example, and can even click to have UltraCopier suggest a new name. UltraCopier claims to be faster than most built-in copying engines too, and offers a settings panel that gives control over just about every aspect if you've ever wanted to control how much memory is used as a buffer when copying files, well now you can! Even better is the ability to resume failed copying procedures. So, should you accidentally yank out a USB stick mid-copy (for example), then you can pick up the procedure as soon as you insert it again.Linux has always been about providing power over your system, but it’s terrific to see apps like UltraCopier bring this kind of usefulness to the GUI, rather than just the command line.

If we could have back the amount of time spent playing Lemmings cin the early nineties, then we’d probably currently have an extra year or two in hand. We’re also fairly sure it’s why our grades were so bad at college. Lemmings has followed us onto the Linux platform in the form of Pingus. Although the graphics are much better than the original, the developers have been savvy enough to change little else  meaning that this is essentially a fully functional clone of the time-sapping original, albeit with new and original level designs to challenge the veteran gamer. The story, such as it is, concerns global warming forcing the penguins to move their habitat a process that, wouldn't you know, involves a significant amount of digging, floating, parachuting, and more. The better graphical touches add up to a make it a slightly slightly easier game, inasmuch as you can easily see at glance which of your pingus you’ve equipped with which gadgets, for example. Nonetheless, there’s still the familiar feeling of panic as you try to equip 50 of the little beasts with the right equipment, and still the same sense of glee when you decide to give up and nuke them all. There are lots of levels provided out of the box, with more available online, and you can also design your own levels via a

WYSIWYG drag-and-drop editor. The latter is ideal if you want to create a handful of easy levels for younger children to learn the concepts of the game with. Pingus is a terrific remake of the original,

and solid both in terms of the action offered as well as the stability and maturity of the software.