# Software Center

Ubuntu Documentation Project &legal;
Michael Vogt mvo@ubuntu.com
Matthew Paul Thomas mpt@ubuntu.com
Andrew Higginson rugby471@gmail.com

How to install and remove software.

## What is Software Center?

Software Center is a virtual catalog of thousands of free applications and other software to make your computer more useful.

You can find software by category or by searching, and you can install an item with the click of a button.

You can also examine which software is installed on the computer already, and remove anything you no longer need.

## Installing software

To install something with Software Center, you need administrator access and a working Internet connection. (If you set up the operating system on this computer yourself, you have administrator access automatically.)

1. In the Get Software section, find the thing you want to install. If you already know its name, try typing the name in the search field. Or try searching for the type of program you want (like “spreadsheet”). Otherwise, browse the list of departments.

2. Select the item in the list, and choose More Info.

3. Choose Install. You may need to enter the administrative password before the installation can begin.

How long something takes to install depends on how large it is, and the speed of your computer and Internet connection.

When the screen changes to say “Installed”, the software is ready to use.

## Using a program once it’s installed

For most programs, once they are installed, you can launch them from the Applications menu. (Utilities for changing settings may appear inside System Preferences or System Administration instead).

To find out where to launch a new program, navigate to the screen for that program Software Center, if it is not still being displayed. The menu location should be displayed on that screen, below the colored bar.

## Removing software

To remove software, you need administrator access. (If you set up the operating system on this computer yourself, you have administrator access automatically.)

1. In the Installed Software section, find the item you want to remove.

2. Select the item in the list, and choose Remove. You may need to enter the administrative password.

If a program is open when you remove it, usually it will stay open even after it is removed. As soon as you close it, it will no longer be available.

## Why is it asking me to remove several programs together?

Sometimes if you try to remove one item, Software Center will warn you that other items will be removed too. There are two main reasons this happens.

- If you remove an application, any add-ons or plugins for that application usually will be removed too.

- Multiple applications are sometimes provided as a single package. If any of them are installed, all of them are installed. And if any of them are removed, all of them are removed. Software Center cannot remove them individually, because it has no instructions on how to separate them.

You can use the Main Menu settings to hide unwanted items without removing them from the computer. In GNOME, you can find Main Menu inside System Preferences.

- Customizing the menu bar

## What if a program I want isn’t available?

First, check that View All Software is selected.

If the software you want still isn’t there, but you know that it runs on this operating system, try contacting the original developers of the program to ask if they can help make it available.

If a program is available for other operating systems but not for this one, let the developers know that you’re interested in running it on this operating system.

## What if a program doesn’t work?

With tens of thousands of programs in Software Center, there’s always the chance that a few of them won’t work properly on your computer.

If you are familiar with reporting bugs in software, you can help out by reporting the problem to the developers, see http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting for information on how to report a bug in Debian. If you do not run Debian, but a distribution based on it, you might need to report the bug to another address.

Otherwise, look through Software Center for another program to do what you want.