Ubuntu: Up and Running

Chapter 11. The Internet

One of the computer’s biggest functions these days is Internet connectivity, whether for browsing websites, exchanging emails, sending family photos to relatives, making use of free Internet phone calls, using cloud servers for offline storage, or any number of other things.

And Ubuntu is no shirker when it comes to the horsepower needed for some of these tasks. It is light on system resources, leaving plenty of memory and processor power for use by programs such as browsers and instant messengers, and it’s fast, so your use of the Internet will be as streamlined as possible.

What’s more, Ubuntu comes with all the software you could want to get you up and running, and there’s plenty more you can easily install using the Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic Package Manager. In this chapter, I’ll take you through some of the main installed programs, and detail others you might want to add.

Web Browsing

We all use browsers nowadays as if they were extensions of ourselves. Whenever we need the facts about something, we turn to our computers and Google it. Some developers have even written browser operating systems, with which you hardly ever need to leave your browser. And productivity suites such as Google Apps bring cloud computing ever closer.

By default, the browser installed with Ubuntu is Mozilla Firefox (see Figure 11-1). Like most of the other applications in this chapter, you will find the launcher for Firefox in the Applications → Internet ...