My *Updated* Ubuntu - must have list -

It's been a while now, and I've upgraded a few times since my last list entry. Now I'm on "Hardy Heron", that means a lot of the previous must haves are included, and I need to re-visit my must haves, for a complete Ubuntu OS.

List of Software that I have installed on top of the standard Desktop Ubuntu installation :

1. Kino, video editing. <- Still on top
2. Codecs for various music and video formats, they get installed when needed.
3. css2, for playing DVD's.
4. Pan, Newsreader.
5. Picasa from Google, Yes they made a linux one.
6. GParted, Gnome Partition editor, great for your external harddisks or USB sticks.
7. GLabels, great for name labels or cd covers..
8. abcde, the CD ripper, that generates the aac files correctly.

An this list will probably extend over time...

Try out a different linux distro using vmware.

I would like to have an extremely basic linux system, with a simple desktop and a browser, which supports all the different plugins the new web needs. This means java, flash, adobe reader, quick time and everything else web related.
I've found a few minimalistic linux distributions, but the problem is burning every single one of them to a CDRom. Then trying them out by rebooting, it was too much of a pain.
I found out that, it's not nessecary, when you 've got wmplayer installed.

Just get a clean vmx file like this one:

#!/usr/bin/vmware
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "4"
scsi0.present = "TRUE"
memsize = "256"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.fileName = "~/cdrom/yourcdrom.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
displayName = "LiveCD"
guestOS = "otherlinux"
nvram = "otherlinux.nvram"

insert your filename.iso instead of the one in this template.
Start it with vmplayer, and off you go...

Get vmplayer here:
http://www.vmware.com/download/player/open_source.html