linux apps you can use without downloading Run Linux GUI apps on the Windows Subsystem for Linux (preview) You can now preview Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) support for running Linux GUI applications (X11 and Wayland) on Windows in a fully integrated desktop experience. WSL 2 enables Linux GUI applications to feel native and natural to use on Windows. Launch Linux apps from the Windows Start menu Pin Linux apps to the Windows task bar Use alt-tab to switch between Linux and Windows apps Cut + Paste across Windows and Linux apps. You can now integrate both Windows and Linux applications into your workflow for a seamless desktop experience. Install support for Linux GUI apps. Prerequisites. Support for Linux GUI apps via WSL will become generally available in the next major release of Windows. To access to the preview build of Windows and try running Linux GUI apps now, you'll need to join the Windows Insider Program and run a Windows 10 Insider Preview build from the dev channel. Installed driver for vGPU. To run Linux GUI apps, you should first install the preview driver matching your system below. This will enable you to use a virtual GPU (vGPU) so you can benefit from hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering. Fresh install - No prior WSL installation. If you have not already followed the steps to install WSL, you can use the new simplified install command. Open a command prompt with administrator privileges. Select Start , type PowerShell , right-click Windows PowerShell , and then select Run as administrator . Run this command and reboot your machine when prompted: Once your machine has finished rebooting, installation will continue and you will be asked to enter a username and password. This will be your Linux credential for the distribution. You're now ready to begin using Linux GUI apps on WSL! Existing WSL install. If you already have WSL installed on your machine, you can update to the latest version that includes Linux GUI support by running the update command from an elevated command prompt. Select Start , type PowerShell , right-click Windows PowerShell , and then select Run as administrator . Enter the WSL update command: You will need to restart WSL for the update to take effect. You can restart WSL by running the shutdown command in PowerShell. Linux GUI apps are only supported with WSL 2 and will not work with a configured for WSL 1. Read about how to change your distribution from WSL 1 to WSL 2. Run Linux GUI apps. You can run the following commands from your Linux terminal to download and install these popular Linux applications. If you are using a different distribution than Ubuntu, it may use a different package manager than apt. Once the Linux application is installed, you can find it in your Start menu under the distribution name. For example: Ubuntu -> Microsoft Edge . Update the packages in your distribution. Install . Gedit is the default text editor of the GNOME . To launch your bashrc file in the editor, enter: gedit. Install GIMP. GIMP is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks. To launch, enter: . Install Nautilus. Nautilus, also known as GNOME Files, is the for the GNOME desktop. (Similiar to Windows ). To launch, enter: nautilus. Install VLC. VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files. To launch, enter: vlc. Install X11 apps. X11 is the Linux windowing system and this is a miscellaneous collection of apps and tools that ship with it, such as the xclock, xcalc calculator, xclipboard for cut and paste, xev for event testing, etc. See the x.org docs for more info. To launch, enter the name of the tool you would like to use. For example: How to Install Software on Linux. This article was co-authored by our trained team of editors and researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. This article has been viewed 8,725 times. This wikiHow teaches you how to download and install new apps on your computer, using a Linux . In most Linux distributions, there is a dedicated app that comes with a simple graphical (GUI) for installing software on your computer. Alternatively, you can use the Snap tool on any Linux distribution, and install apps via the Snappy package management system. You can also use the Apt package manager on Ubuntu or other Debian-based systems to install software directly from the official repositories. Installing Software on Linux¶ One of the most difficult things to get used to in the Linux world is installing new software packages. In the world of Windows, every program comes with a Setup.exe program that asks you some very easy questions and takes care of the job for you. While Linux software can be almost that easy to install, you will sometimes find software that seems to fight every step of the way. I can’t cover all the problems you might run into, but I’ll try to give you the basics and a few pointers to help get you over the rough spots. Software tends to come in “packages”. In the Windows world a package is a Setup.exe or a program.zip file. On a Mac a package is a program.dmg or a program.sit file. In the Linux world, there are several kinds of packages, and each distribution has its own preferred package format. The standard Linux package format (according to the Linux Standard Base) is RPM . RPM is a packaging system originally developed by Red Hat and widely used in the Linux community. Distributions using it include Fedora, Mandriva, Red Hat (naturally), and SUSE. An RPM package file normally will be named something like program-version-other.rpm. Another popular package format is DEB , the Debian software package. Debian packages and the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) were the first to introduce several advanced features that are now common, such as automatic dependency resolution and signed packages. Debian packages are used by Debian GNU/Linux (naturally), and distributions based on it, including Ubuntu, Knoppix, and Mepis. A Debian package file normally will be named something like program-version-other.deb. Remember, you will need to become SuperUser to install software. Debian, Ubuntu: APT¶ There is a broad array of tools for working with DEB packages, but the one you will commonly use is apt-get , arguably the easiest of Linux package management tools. apt-get is so easy because it not only keeps track of what packages are installed, but also what other packages are available. It will even download them from the Internet for you (if properly configured). To remove software is just as easy. Although the repositories that contain installable packages might live on the Internet or on a disc somewhere, APT keeps a local database on your hard drive with a list of all available packages and where to find them. This database needs to be explicitly updated. To update the APT database: A common idiom is to update your package database, and then upgrade all the packages that have patches or security updates to install. The following command will do this all at once. For a more indepth apt-get tutorial and other resources, see Managing Software with APT and dpkg . Fedora, Red Hat: yum ¶ yum does for RPM packages roughly what apt-get does for Debian packages. Like apt-get , yum can download and install packages from a configured repository. To remove software is just as easy. yum does not keep a local copy of your package database by default, so normally there is no need to update it. To install all available security patches and bug fixes, use this command: You can also explicitly update a single package with: For a more indepth yum tutorial and other resources, see Managing Software with yum and rpm . Mandriva: urpm ¶ Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrake and Connectiva) has a toolset similar to APT called urpmi . To install software: To remove software: To update the local package database: To install security updates and bug fixes: For a more indepth yum tutorial and other resources, see Managing Software with urpm . Balls¶ No, this is not a naughty term! A tar ball is a (usually compressed) archive of files, similar to a Zip file on Windows or a Sit on the Mac. Tar balls come in files that end in .tar , .tar.gz , .tgz , or something along these lines. To unpack a tar ball, use this command. The parameters are x to extract files, z to filter through for decompression (leave this off if the file does not have a gz extension), v for verbose mode so you can tell what’s going on, f indicating there will be a filename to follow. You may want to create an alias called “untar” that feeds in these options if you have a hard time remembering command line options as I do. This command will not install the software, it will only extract the archived files. It is your job then to find the README file or INSTALL file and read its instructions for installation. If the archive contains binaries there will usually be a setup script (often called install.sh ) that you must execute as SuperUser . Very often, software delivered in tar balls is not in executable form, but in source code, which must first be compiled before it can be installed. For more details on this, see Installing Software from Source Code . Other Systems¶ Some other Linux distributions have their own way of managing packages, notably SUSE. SUSE uses RPM as its native package format, but has its own high level tool to manage system software installation. SUSE Linux uses a tool called yast (which allegedly is an acronym for Yet Another Setup Tool) to perform all kinds of system administration tasks, including installing software. Having no experience with it, I cannot give you more details. man yast for help. What Apps Can You Actually Run on Linux? Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read nearly one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek. Read more. Chromebooks can now run Linux desktop apps, offering a whole new universe of software to Chrome OS users. You can install a Linux distribution like Ubuntu on your PC, too. But what applications are available for Linux? Web Browsers (Now With Netflix, Too) Most Linux distributions include Mozilla Firefox as the default web browser. 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. Pretty much everything inside your web browser should “just work” in Linux. Netflix now works normally in both Firefox and Chrome on Linux thanks to added support for its DRM. Adobe Flash has become less common on the web but is also available for Linux. It’s included with Chrome, just like on Windows, and you can install it separately for Firefox or Chromium. Linux doesn’t support some older browser plug-ins like Silverlight, but those are no longer widely used on the web. As the desktop PC world has shifted more and more to online, web-based software, Linux has become easier to use. If an application you want to run has a web version, you can use it on Linux. Open-Source Desktop Applications. Most of the desktop applications you use on Windows or Mac are probably not available for Linux. However, many open-source alternatives are. Microsoft doesn’t offer Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for Linux. Linux distributions usually include LibreOffice instead. (You can also access Office Online in a web browser for free.) Adobe doesn’t produce Photoshop for Linux, but you can use the open-source GIMP image editor instead. Linux distributions often include other simple media tools like the photo manager and video editor, too. Apple’s iTunes doesn’t run on Linux, either. You can run other media center programs like the application included with Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions. Or you can use the web-based versions of many online music and video services. 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. There are lots of alternatives. Other common open-source utilities do run on Linux. For example, the popular VLC media player and VirtualBox virtual machine program both run on Linux. Standard Utilities. 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. Of course, Linux does include a powerful command-line environment and developer tools. You get the Bash complete with GNU utilities, and you can install many more things with a few terminal commands. Linux’s Bash shell is so powerful that Microsoft added it to Windows! Minecraft, , Spotify, and More. Some of the software you use on Windows is available on a Linux system. This software is often called “proprietary” software because it’s closed- source, not open-source. Spotify, Skype, and Slack are all available for Linux. It helps that these three programs were all built using web-based technologies and can be easily ported to Linux. Minecraft can be installed on Linux, too. Discord and Telegram, two popular chat applications, also offer official Linux clients. Dropbox officially supports Linux, but and Microsoft OneDrive don’t offer official clients. If you have an application you love and depend on, it’s worth searching online to see whether it’s available 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. on Linux. Valve’s popular Steam gaming service also runs on Linux. Don’t jump for joy just yet, though. While Steam itself runs on Linux, not every game on Steam is available on Linux. You can browse the Steam OS + Linux category on the Steam store to see the games available for Linux. On the Steam website, look for the Steam icon on a circle next to the game, indicating Steam OS support. Any game that supports Steam OS will also run on Linux since Steam OS is based on Linux. The majority of Steam games aren’t available for Linux, just as they aren’t available for macOS. However, many games—particularly indie games —are. You’ll have something to play on Linux, but you can’t play everything you can on Windows. for Running Windows Apps. Wine is an open-source for the Windows API. In other words, it lets you run Windows applications on Linux, macOS, and other operating systems. At least, that’s what it does when it works correctly. This is an open-source community project that’s reverse-engineering the way Windows works. It doesn’t work perfectly, and it can’t run every application. Even if it can run an application, some features may be broken, other things may not look right, and the application might occasionally crash. It can take some fiddling and configuration to get an application working correctly, too. We don’t recommend relying on Wine to run some Windows software on Linux. Wine can run some old apps well, but you might as well use Windows if you plan on running a bunch of Windows applications. Wine can offer better performance than a virtual machine while playing PC games—assuming those games run well in Wine. But you’re almost always better off just running the game on Windows. If you’re curious how well an application works, consult the Wine AppDB to see what other Wine users have reported. You can also try CrossOver Linux, which works similarly to CrossOver Mac. It uses Wine under the hood but helps walk you through installing and configuring popular applications to work properly. It’s a paid application. Valve is adding built-in support for the Proton compatibility layer, which is based on Wine, to the latest versions of Steam for Linux. This will be interesting to play with in the future. Virtual Machines. Virtual machine programs are available for Linux, too. Oracle’s VirtualBox runs on Linux, and you can also use a Linux-specific virtual machine tool like GNOME Boxes. The Boxes application uses the underlying KVM virtual machine support in the Linux kernel. Either way, this software will let you run Windows and other operating systems on a Linux desktop. This provides another way to run Windows software if you need it. Applications you run in a virtual machine won’t perform as well as if they were running on real hardware. It’s also more annoying to share files and other data between software in a virtual machine and applications running on your normal Linux desktop. And the virtual machine won’t offer good enough performance to play recent 3D games, so don’t count on it for demanding applications. Like Wine, though, this is another way to run Windows applications if you need them. You won’t have the annoying configuration issues you have with Wine, and everything should just run—unless it needs hardware it can’t access in the virtual machine. But it’s still inconvenient to run many of your applications inside a virtual machine. How to Install Microsoft Office on Linux. Chris Hoffman is Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. He's written about technology for over a decade and was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Chris has written for The New York Times, been interviewed as a technology expert on TV stations like Miami's NBC 6, and had his work covered by news outlets like the BBC. Since 2011, Chris has written over 2,000 articles that have been read nearly one billion times---and that's just here at How-To Geek. Read more. Linux users can use LibreOffice, Google Docs, and even Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, but some people still need — or just want — the desktop version of Microsoft Office. Luckily, there are ways to run Microsoft Office on Linux. This is particularly useful if you’re still on the soon-to-be-unsupported Windows XP and don’t want to pay an upgrade fee to upgrade your computer to Windows 7 or 8. This obviously isn’t supported by Microsoft, but it still works fairly well. Ways to Install Microsoft Office. Wine : Wine is a Windows compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows programs on Linux. It’s not perfect, but it’s optimized enough to run popular programs like Microsoft Office well. Wine will work better with older versions of Office, so the older your version of Office, the more likely it is to work without any trouble. Wine is completely free, although you may have to do some tweaking yourself. CrossOver : CrossOver is a paid product that uses code from the free version of Wine. While it costs money, CrossOver does more of the work for you. They test their code to ensure that popular programs like Microsoft Office run well and ensure upgrades won’t break them. CrossOver also provides support — so if Office doesn’t run well, you have someone to contact who will help you. Virtual Machine : You could also install in a virtual machine using a program like VirtualBox or VMware and install Microsoft Office inside it. With Seamless Mode or Mode, you could even have the Office windows appear on your Linux desktop. This method provides the best compatibility, but it’s also the heaviest — you have to run a full version of Windows in the background. You’ll need a copy of Windows, such as an old Windows XP disc you have lying around, to install in the virtual machine. We’ll be focusing on using Wine or Crossover to install Office directly on Linux. If you want to use a virtual machine, all you have to do is install VirtualBox or VMware Player and create a new virtual machine. The program will walk you through installing Windows and you can install Office inside your virtualized Windows as you normally would. Installing Microsoft Office With Wine. We tested Office 2007 with this process, as Office 2013 is known not to work properly and Office 2010 doesn’t appear to be well supported. If you want to use an older version of Office, like Office 2003, you’ll likely find that it works even better. If you want to install Office 2010, you may need to perform some more tweaks — check the Wine AppDB page for the version of Office you want to install for more information. First, install the Wine package from your Linux distribution’s software package repository. On Ubuntu, open the , search for Wine, and install the Wine package. Next, insert the Microsoft Office disc into your computer. Open it in your file manager, right-click the setup.exe file, and open the .exe file with Wine. The installer will appear and, if everything goes well, you should be able to go through the installation process on Linux as you normally would on Windows. We didn’t run into any problems while installing Office 2007, but this will vary depending on your version of Wine, Linux distribution, and especially the release of Microsoft Office you’re trying to use. For more tips, read the Wine AppDB and search for the version of Microsoft Office you’re trying to install. You’ll find more in-depth installation instructions there, filled with tips and hacks other people have used. You could also try using a third-party tool like PlayOnLinux, which will help you install Microsoft Office and other popular Windows programs. Such an application may speed things up and make the process easier on you. PlayOnLinux is also available for free in the Ubuntu Software Center. Why You Might Want to Use CrossOver. If the Wine method doesn’t work or you encounter problems, you may want to try using CrossOver instead. CrossOver offers a free two-week trial, but the full version will cost you $60 if you want to keep using it. After downloading and installing CrossOver, you’ll be able to open the CrossOver application and use it to install Office. You can do everything you can do with CrossOver with the standard version of Wine, but CrossOver may require less hacking around to get things working. Whether this is worth the cost is up to you. Using Microsoft Office on Linux. After the installation, you’ll find the Microsoft Office applications in your desktop’s launcher. On Ubuntu, we had to log out and log back in before the shortcuts would appear in the Unity desktop’s launcher. Office works pretty well on Linux. Wine presents your home folder to Word as your My Documents folder, so it’s easy to save files and load them from your standard Linux file system. The Office interface obviously doesn’t look as at home on Linux as it does on Windows, but it performs fairly well. Each Office program should should work normally, although it’s possible that some features — particularly little-used ones that haven’t been tested very much — may not work properly in Wine. Of course, Wine isn’t perfect and you may run into some issues while using Office in Wine or CrossOver. If you really want to use Office on a Linux desktop without compatibility issues, you may want to create a Windows virtual machine and run a virtualized copy of Office. This ensures you won’t have compatibility issues, as Office will be running on a (virtualized) Windows system.