40. Applications at a Glance¶
amadeOS comes with its own set of programs, the amade applications, written in Java for this desktop. Next to them are two well-known programs from the wider free software world: Firefox for the web and LibreOffice for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings that need more than WritePad offers.
| Program | What it is for | Front Panel | Chapter |
|---|---|---|---|
| File Manager | Folders and files, in two panels | File Manager | 41 |
| Text Editor | Plain text: notes, lists, configuration files | Text & Office | 42 |
| WritePad | Letters and documents on real pages, ODT and Word | Text & Office | 43 |
| LibreOffice Writer | The full office word processor | Text & Office | 43 |
| LibreOffice Calc | Spreadsheets, Excel and ODS files | Text & Office | 43 |
| LibreOffice Impress | Presentations, PowerPoint and ODP files | Text & Office | 43 |
| LibreOffice Draw | Drawings, diagrams and editing PDF files | Text & Office, Graphics | 43 |
| LibreOffice Math | Mathematical formulas | Text & Office | 43 |
| Mailer | E-mail from one or more accounts | Mail & Internet | 44 |
| Calendar | Appointments, reminders and To Do items | Calendar | 45 |
| Contacts | Addresses, phone numbers and birthdays | Text & Office, Mail & Internet | 45 |
| Audio Station | Audio CDs, music files and internet radio | Sound & Video | 46 |
| Video Player | Video files, streams and DVDs | Sound & Video | 46 |
| Image Viewer | Photos and pictures, slideshows, camera data and maps | Graphics | 47 |
| Image Scan | Scanning photos and letters | Graphics | 47 |
| Fractals | Exploring the Mandelbrot set | Graphics | 47 |
| PDF Viewer | Reading PDF documents, searching and printing them | Text & Office | 48 |
| Books | E-books (EPUB) and comics (CBZ) on a bookshelf of your own | Text & Office | 48 |
| Calculator | Basic, scientific and programmer calculations | Text & Office | 48 |
| Firefox | The web | Mail & Internet | 48 |
| Documentation Viewer | The documentation installed on the computer | Help | 48 |
| Games | Fourteen games, from Mines to Town | Games | 49 |
Starting a program¶
- Click the icon or open the drawer of its slot in the Front Panel (chapter 22).
- Choose it in the Application Manager: click the icon of the Tools slot.
- Double-click a file in the File Manager: it opens in the program made for it, a
.txtin the Text Editor, an.odtin WritePad, a photo in the Image Viewer, a.pdfin the PDF Viewer, an.epubin Books, an.icsin the Calendar. - Type its command in a terminal, such as
amade-pad letter.txt. Each section below names the command.
While a program starts, the pointer shows the busy cursor until its window appears.
The Application Manager¶
The Application Manager lists every installed program with a desktop entry, sorted by kind in tabs: Graphics, Internet & Network, Sound & Video, Games, Office, System & Monitor, Settings & Tools, Text Editors and more. Select a program and click Launch. Programs that fit no drawer of the Front Panel, such as programming tools, are found here. Reload Cache reads the list again after you installed something.
What all amade applications share¶
- The look of the desktop. They use the palette and the text size chosen in Settings and change with them at once, even while they are open (chapter 31).
- Five languages. They follow the desktop language (chapter 25). Each has a language setting of its own as well, which applies to that program alone from its next start.
- Your settings stay with you. Each program keeps its settings in a folder of its own under
~/.config/amadeos/, readable only by you. - Safe saving. A file is written to a temporary file first and put in place when it is complete, so a crash or a full disk never leaves half a document behind.
- No surprises from files. Files that could run a program, such as
.sh,.jaror.desktopfiles, are not opened from the File Manager or a mail without asking first.
Your data
None of the amade applications sends anything about you anywhere. They connect to the network only for what you asked for: your mail server, the radio station you chose, the title list of a CD you inserted.
Under the hood
Every amade application is a Debian package (amade-pad, amade-mail, …) with a jar under /opt/<package>/, a start command in /usr/bin/ and a desktop entry in /usr/share/applications/, whose Categories decide the Front Panel drawer. They are built on the library amade-commons, which provides the Motif look, the theme, the language and the start-up. The source code of each is in its own repository at github.com/datazuul/<package>, under the EUPL-1.2.