Multimedia components and proprietary programs

Partners and Shopping Sources

Some proprietary applications like Skype and VMware View Client aren't offered in Ubuntu's standard repositories. Although these programs might be free, they're often under proprietary licenses and are not open source, and, in the case of Skype, very insecure.

These third-party apps can often be found in the Canonical Partners repository that you must first activate. In Software Center, select Edit | Software Sources, click the Other Software tab, then activate the Canonical Partners entry. Again, it might take a while before the sources appear in Software Center.

The For Purchase repository contains mainly software that you can purchase through Software Center – including this magazine in various language editions. Developers usually release the content of these sources on their release date. When you select the software and click Purchase, Software Center links to the Launchpad login page. You can log in to (or register at) the Ubuntu One service and pay via credit card. Apart from official DVD players, you'll also find nifty games such as Family Farm (Figure 4), Oil Rush, and World of Goo. The same payment plan applies to the repository named Independent. There, you'll find mainly apps of external developers that put some minimal time into Ubuntu. Some of them are quite useful, however, because they're meant to handle smaller tasks.

Figure 4: Running under Ubuntu, you'll find not only 1990s style graphics but also visually appealing games, such as Family Farm.

Adobe Products

Loading the flashplugin-installer package on the computer brings in the latest Flash versions from the Adobe website. You might have installed Adobe's PDF Reader from the partner repository in the past. But, you will only need it if Ubuntu's Evince built-in PDF viewer breaks down – which happens in rare cases with PDF files with 3D content or complicated graphics with many levels. For security reasons, you should avoid using Adobe Reader.