[TriLUG] Best Linux Desktop and Desktop Apps?

[Magnus]

Reply inline below, only the areas where I feel I have a solid answer.

On 3/10/06, Tarus Balog <tarus at opennms.org> wrote:
>
> 1) What should I look at in terms of a nice, clean, powerful desktop?
> I like KDE. Is there a distro out there that is stable enough to use
> in a mission critical application (i.e. my desktop) that is current
> enough to contain lots of cool, bright, shiny things? I think Debian
> is out since I don't want to run sid. CentOS? Ubuntu? I doubt anyone
> has duplicated the usefulness of Exposé, but one can hope.


I run CentOS 4.2 at home and at work for desktop use.  I'm quite happy with
it.  It's not got the latest bleeding edge stuff in it but I don't have to
upgrade every six months either.  Simply adding Dag Wieer's yum repository
to your yum configuration will get you a lot of nice stuff that is missing
from CentOS (and by extension RHEL)

For the desktop I prefer KDE and have been using it since almost the
beginning of the project.  But when I'm in the mood for trying something
new, I'll often log out and log back in with Xfce as my desktop instead.
Xfce loads almost instantly on my AMD64 3700+ but KDE still takes awhile.
Xfce is very snappy, very easy to use, and I really don't have a good excuse
for not switching over completely by now.

iTunes: xmms?


I use and like xmms but it doesn't compare to iTunes.

> Mail: Thunderbird

Yup

Browser: Firefox


Yup


> iPhoto: Gallery?


Honestly this is one of the key apps that always gets me back on my crusty
old Powerbook.


> 3) Connectivity: How is the current support for wireless (I love the
> "Location" feature of OSX) and bluetooth? iSync?


Last I looked, SuSE was doing this a lot better than RHEL but I don't really
use wireless anymore.  You might want to play with SuSE.  It's very well
polished and might very well be a better laptop distro.  Given the state of
my powerbook I'll probably be doing the same thing as you in a few months
and I will give SuSE another good long look at that time.

But I won't kid you.  Linux as a desktop is nowhere near as polished as OS
X.  Yes, I use it every day.  I'm using it now at $WORK (a very very
pro-Linux company that still issues WinXP laptops because of the
shortcomings).  I think it works brilliantly as a server but as a desktop it
still feels very raw, rough around the edges, and missing a lot of
applications (that have reached maturity like what you're used to on OS X).

I keep trying OO.o every few months and though it has gotten better, it
still feels very rough and hackerish.  Firefox and Thunderbird are about the
most polished/mature apps I've seen on Linux for the desktop.  Gimp is still
suffering from a crude interface that is disappointing alongside of
Photoshop.

I guess I better put on my flame-retardant kilt now.