Desktop Linux / Unix & Apps

mrterry

Heh,

Wondering what you are running on your desktop / recommend running on your desktop and with what Apps. About to give M$ the heave ho and need recommendations for email client browser system usual stuff for productivity to run and whether to run gui or not if gui which one...

zAbbo

Desktop Distros i would advise
Mandrake or SuSE

As for office environments

Openoffice

and as for Desktop Managers : Gnome or KDE

OfflerCrocGod

For e-mail stuff evolution just released there latest client 1.5 check it out. If you are going to install a distro (which I presume you are) everything comes included with it, so there should be no probs as regards to apps any distro will have everything including the kitchen sink available for installation, if it's your first time using Linux/Unix then dual boot with windows.

niallb

Interesting you mention the option of maybe not running a gui.
Any reason for that or just the way it came out?

I use pine as my mail client, mostly old habit,
as I've been using it for 10 years and it does everything I need.
Anyone else remember when it was the default mail client for a dialup terminal account with IOL.

links is an excellent browser for console mode,
with good frames and table layout support and now with added javascript.
If you use a framebuffer console (almost any graphics card)
it will give you the option of running in graphical mode.

For framebuffer, there is also fbi for image viewing and
PDF reading, and fbtv for the old TV card.
mplayer runs happily on framebuffer too for DVD and video playing.

Depending on what kind of work you do,
you're almost certainly better off installing a gui,
but you don't have to use it unless you need it!

Console office apps are rarer.
A Wordperfect 5.1 or Word 5 for DOS clone would be a great thing, but there's nothing quite like it.
Siag under X is a wordprocessor and spreadsheet (among other things) but in text mode (tsiag) only the spreadsheet works.
Vim or any editor you're comfortable with can put
your text together much faster than any word processor,
and then you can tart it up later in the gui.

There used to be a great spreadsheet called 'sc'
in early versions of slackware. SuSE still has it.
It's not excel compatible though it does read Lotus 1-2-3.

I've probably picked you up wrong, but just in case
there's a few suggestions!

The big advantage of console apps is that you can run them remotely with exactly the same feel as local use.

NiallB

mrterry

Hi Niallb,

No you have hit the nail exactly on the head.

I am not bothered with a GUI as i reckon the fastest way to learn the most about linux / unix is from command line. I can make the most mistakes there and out of sheer frustration should be able to pick it up faster.

From what i have used whenever i have thrown up linux / unix in particular freebsd, RH, debian only way forward is through command line.

Mind me asking out of interest niallb what flavour r u running ?

May install a GUI but dont want to use it !

niallb

Hi mrterry,
I'm running Mandrake on the machine I use most of the day.
It was originally a mandrake 9.1 install, but that was a long time ago!
Mandrake has the best management tool for RPMs I've seen
to date, called 'urpmi' and it saves a lot of hassle.
It is also the only distribution I've seen in a while that has
a menu item Minimal Install (without X) in its installer.
I'm sure gentoo or debian would install simply enough without X,
but most others require X for their configuration tools!

I have one box here for compiling packages, and I can make
my own feed available for boxes I maintain with minimal fuss.

I use OpenBSD and Solaris regularly and use
Knoppix to install Debian systems for converts.

The Command Line Interface is a world view, and it becomes
much more versatile than any GUI can possibly be.

Think how you would easily select from a directory
of a thousand mp3's all those with a particular band name in a title,
now narrow it down to ones last accessed between 3 weeks and 1 week ago,
but only the ones recorded at 192k. Sure, you could do it in a filemanager,
but I doubt very much you could do it as fast
(or script it and repeat it in one command next time).

For a good introduction, search for "Unix is a four letter word".
It's an old book, freely available in lots of formats which is
a crash course in the command line and the vi editor.

NiallB
NiallB

nadir

I also am very close to just using console, i also use pine for mail, and links for brousing, unless i need graphics, then firebird, i do all my downloading with irssi in console also, so i have very little use for X,. However i do find having a minimalistic wm running is nice. It makes it easier to manage xmms and also so my friends can go online without too much difficulty. here we have a laptop running kahaki and a pc running fluxbox, gentoo.is installed on both machines. My personal favourite wm is fluxbox dev. and im trying to make themes at the moment, for the official release, this is my current setup.
digital-guru

scojones

WindowMaker + evolution + xmms + mplayer + grip / lame + ssh + mozilla firebird @ boards.ie == all that you need

niallb

I use a window manager on my laptop called ratpoison.
(X allows me use a TV out if required).

ratpoison is so lightweight, it added over an hour
to my battery life as the machine no longer swaps.
It just does fullscreen windows
(Well, you can sort of tile them)
with no decorations or menus - all keypresses.
It's effectively an X aware version of 'screen',
the console users best friend.

I like one thing in particular about sjones list,
it's a good basic list of everyday apps.

WindowMaker + evolution + xmms + mplayer + grip / lame + ssh + mozilla firebird @ boards.ie == all that you need

console + pine + mp3blaster + mplayer + rip + ssh + links ++ vim

Under X I use dillo for boards.ie, because it crawls under mozilla based browsers (on my PIII650 over ISDN anyway)

NiallB

Silent Bob

run fluxbox as your window manager.

You have the GUI for when you need it (web-browsing is much more pleasant with a GUI) and I find that any time I need to do system adminning I fire up an Eterm and go about my business on the CLI.