A list of useful terms for the Ubuntu ecosystem for software and hardware.
A
AppArmor is an effective and easy-to-use Linux application security system. AppArmor proactively protects the operating system and applications from external or internal threats, even zero-day attacks, by enforcing good behavior and preventing both known and unknown application flaws from being exploited.
APT (Advanced Package Tool) is a higher-level package management systemtool, that is more commonly used than dpkg as it can fetch packages from remote locations.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is an open source, high-quality solution for producing high resolution frames from lower resolution inputs.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.0 is an open source, high-quality solution for producing high resolution frames from lower resolution inputs. It uses temporal data and optimized anti-aliasing to boost framerates in supported games while delivering similar or better image quality than native resolution without requiring dedicated machine learning hardware.
AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3), is the latest version of the company’s upscaling tech. AMD claims it’ll provide 2x times increase in frame rate over FSR 2, boosted by the new AMD Fluid Motion Frames technology.
B
Bottles is a software tool that let's you run Windows software on Linux. It's built-in dependency installation system grants automatic software compatibility access.
bsnes is a Super Nintendo (SNES) emulator focused on performance, features, and ease of use.
Btrfs is a modern copy on write (CoW) filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while also focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration.
C
Canonical makers of Ubuntu Desktop and Server.
chronyd is a daemon which runs in background on the system. It obtains measurements (via the network) of the system's offset relative to other systems, and adjusts the system time accordingly.
Citra is an open-source emulator for the Nintendo 3DS capable of playing many of your favorite games.
Chiaki is a Free and Open Source Software Client for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 Remote Play
D
dpkg (Debian Package) is the package management system in Debian and its OS derivatives.
DEB is a Debian Software Package file used on Debian-based Linux systems such Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Pop!_OS.
Discover is an software center that let's you manage software from multiple sources, including your operating system's software repository, Flatpak repos, the Snap store, or even AppImages from store.kde.org.
Discord is an application with modern voice & text chat app. It provides clear voice, multiple server and channel support, mobile apps, and more.
Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii.
DOSBox is an open-source DOS emulator which primarily focuses on running DOS Games.
DuckStation is an simulator/emulator of the Sony PlayStation 1 console, focusing on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability.
DXVK is a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11 which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine.
Dynamic Cloud Sync is a tool that Steam will use to automatically upload all modified save game data to the cloud prior to the device entering sleep mode.
E
EmuDeck is a tool that takes care of everything for your retrogaming needs from RetroArch Configuration, Bezels, Gamepad Configuration for GameCube, Wii, Citra, SNES, etc.
EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) is a frontend application for browsing and launching games from your multi-platform game collection.
Epic Games Store is a digital video game storefront for Microsoft Windows and macOS, operated by Epic Games.
F
Flathub is an app store and build service for hundreds of apps which can be easily installed on any Linux distribution.
Flatseal is a graphical utility to review and modify permissions from your Flatpak applications.
Flycast is a multi-platform Sega Dreamcast, Naomi and Atomiswave emulator derived from reicast.
FreeRDP is a free remote desktop protocol library and clients.
G
Gamescope is a SteamOS session micro-compositing window manager formerly known as steamcompmgr.
GameHub is a unified library for all your games.
Geforce NOW is NVIDIA's Cloud Gaming Service.
GNOME Desktop, is an easy and elegant way to use your computer, GNOME is designed to put you in control and get things done.
GNOME Software is a utility for installing applications and updates on Linux.
GOG GALAXY is a fully optional client to install, play and update your games.
GOverlay is an open source project aimed to create a Graphical UI to manage Vulkan/OpenGL overlays. It is still in early development.
H
Heroic is an Open Source Game Launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS (for both Native and Windows Games using Crossover).
Hardware Enablement (HWE) is a Ubuntu LTS enablement stack that provides the newer kernel(currently kernel 6.2 for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) and X support for existing Ubuntu LTS releases. That stack can be enabled manually, but may also be pre-enabled with an Ubuntu LTS release. The HWE stack can be used by desktop and server systems, as well as cloud or virtual images.
I
Itch.io Store is an app that lets you effortlessly download and run games and software from itch.io.
J
JuJu is an open source application modeling tool for public and private clouds. It forms part of Ubuntu's cloud portfolio, together with Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu OpenStack, MAAS for bare-metal provisioning, and Landscape for systems management and monitoring.
JAAS (Juju as a Service) is a service that makes it easy to deploy OpenStack at scale. Where you quickly and reliably build an enterprise-scale cloud running on Ubuntu.
K
KDE Connect is a tool that lets you easily link up your phone to your computer, your computer to your tablet; or your computer to your Steam Deck device.
KDE Plasma Desktop, is a beautiful Windows-like desktop that you use to surf the web, keep in touch with colleagues, friends and family, manage your files, enjoy music and videos; and get creative and productive at work.
L
Linux kernel is the main component of a Linux operating system (OS) and is the core interface between a computer’s hardware and its processes. It communicates between the 2, managing resources as efficiently as possible.
Lutris is a gaming client for Linux. It gives you access to all your video games with the exception of the current console generation.
Luxtorpeda is a Steam Play compatibility tool to run games using native Linux engines.
LXD is a next generation system container manager. It offers a user experience similar to virtual machines but using Linux containers instead. It's image based with pre-made images available for a wide number of Linux distributions and is built around a very powerful, yet pretty simple, REST API.
LXQt Desktop,the Lightweight Qt Desktop Environment.
M
MAAS is an open source SDDC solution used by telcos, financial institutions, media companies and supercomputer admins to take care of all the low-level details. PXE, IPMI, ILO and all the custom protocols needed for diverse vendor hardware support come together in one clean REST API with Python bindings for easy integration and automation.
MATE Desktop, is the continuation of GNOME 2 desktop environment.
MAME is a Arcade Machine Emulator.
MangoHud is a Vulkan and OpenGL overlay for monitoring FPS, temperatures, CPU/GPU load and more.
Mesa3D is a 3D graphics library with open-source implementations of OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, OpenCL, and more. Mesa 23.1 comes with support for several new Vulkan extensions for the Radeon Vulkan driver (RADV) for AMD Radeon GPUs.
m64p is a Nintendo 64 Emulator.
mGBA is a new emulator for running Game Boy Advance games.
Moonlight Game Streaming is a program that let you stream from your PC games over the Internet with no configuration required.
Multipass is a command line interface to launch, manage and generally test with instances of Linux(Ubuntu) in a VM. It works on Linux, Windows and macOS.
Mutter is a Wayland display server and X11 window manager and compositor library. When used as a Wayland display server, it runs on top of KMS and libinput. It implements the compositor side of the Wayland core protocol as well as various protocol extensions.
N
Nala is a commandline frontend for the APT package manager.
O
OpenZFS is an open-source storage platform. It includes the functionality of both traditional file systems and volume manager.
P
Parsec is a video game streaming platform, which offers a wide variety of games and genres to choose from and provides a high-quality and smooth gameplay.
PCSX2 is a PlayStation 2 'emulator', a free program that tries to replicate the PlayStation 2 console to enable you to play PS2 games on your PC.
Pegasus is a cross platform, customizable graphical frontend for launching emulators and managing your game library (especially retro games) and launching them from one place.
PPA(Personal Package Archive) is a set of software repositories that can distribute software and updates directly to Ubuntu users. Create your source package, upload it and Launchpad will build binaries and then host them in your own apt repository.
PipeWire is a server and user space API to deal with multimedia pipelines.It provides a low-latency, graph based processing engine on top of audio and video devices that can be used to support the use cases currently handled by both pulseaudio and JACK.
Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system.
ProtonPlus a simple Wine and Proton-based compatiblity tools manager for GNOME. It works with Steam, Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher and Bottles.
Q
Qt is a cross-platform application development framework for desktop, embedded and mobile. Supported Platforms include Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android, and iOS.
R
Restricted unprivileged user namespaces are a feature of the kernel that can be used to replace many of the uses of setuid and setguid programs (setting user identity and group identity), and allow for applications to create more secure sandboxes. However, they expose kernel interfaces that are normally restricted to processes with privileged capabilities (root) to use by unprivileged users.
ReplaySorcery is an open-source, instant-replay solution for Linux.
RetroPie is a frontend for emulators that allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi, ODroid C1/C2, or PC into a retro-gaming machine.
RetroArch is a frontend for emulators, game engines and media players. It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through its slick graphical interface.
RPCS3 is an experimental open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger written in C++ for Windows and Linux.
S
Snap is an application containerized with all its dependencies. A snap can be installed using a single command on any device running Linux.
Snap Store is a build and distribution service for Snap applications.
systemd is a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system.
Synaptic Package Manager is a graphical package management tool based on APT.
Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront from Valve.
SteamGridDB is a huge database where you can download and share custom video game assets and personalize your gaming library.
SGDBoop is a tool that automatically applies assets from SteamGridDB directly to your Steam library with a click of a button, removing the need to download and set them manually.
Steam Remote Play Together is a steam service that let's you share your Steam local multi-player games with friends over the internet, for free.
Steamworks is a free suite of tools available to any developer to use in their game or software on Steam and the Steam Deck.
Sunshine is a Game stream host for Moonlight that is a self-hosted, low latency, cloud gaming solution with support for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs.
T
Trusted Platform Module (TPM) full-disk encryption is a featire where passphrases will no longer be needed on supported platforms, and that the secret used to decrypt the encrypted data will be protected by a TPM and recovered automatically only by early boot software that is authorised to access the data.
U
Ubuntu is a modern open source operating system on Linux for the enterprise Server, Desktop, Cloud, and IoT developed by Canonical.
Ubuntu Core is a secure and minimal version of Ubuntu that is designed for IoT and embedded systems. Ubuntu Core updates itself and its applications automatically using snap packages exclusively to create a confined-based system.
Ubuntu OpenStack is the #1 platform for OpenStack and the #1 platform for public cloud operations on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Ubuntu on WSL is a wiki guide on getting started with the latest version of Ubuntu installed and setup on WSL for Windows 10/11.
Ubuntu Pro for Azure is a premium image designed by Canonical optimized for production environments running on Azure. It includes security and compliance services, enabled by default, in a form suitable for small to large-scale Linux enterprise operations with no contract needed.
Unity Desktop, a graphical shell for the GNOME desktop environment originally developed by Canonical Ltd.
Usermode FTP Server is a tool that let's you start an FTP server as user and transfer files with any FTP client.
V
Valve makers of the Steam, SteamOS, and Steam Deck.
vkd3d-proton is a fork of VKD3D, which aims to implement the full Direct3D 12 API on top of Vulkan. The project serves as the development effort for Direct3D 12 support in Proton.
W
Warehouse is a versatile toolbox for viewing flatpak info, managing user data, and batch managing installed flatpaks. Flatpak version
Warpinator is a free, open-source tool for sending and receiving files between computers that are on the same network.
Waydroid is a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular Linux system.
WirePlumber is a modular session / policy manager for PipeWire and a GObject-based high-level library that wraps PipeWire’s API, providing convenience for writing the daemon’s modules as well as external tools for managing PipeWire.
X
xemu is an original Xbox emulator.
Xenia is an Xbox 360 Emulator.
Y
yuzu is an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.
Z
ZFS is an enterprise-ready open source file system and volume manager with unprecedented flexibility and an uncompromising commitment to data integrity.