[TriLUG] Linux desktop suggestions

[mail via TriLUG]

Of course, this is my personal preference, but he’s my suggestion, in original 
order.

I would suggest the use of KDE Plasma, either Fedora or openSUSE. I personally 
use Fedora with Linux-libre, but I wouldn’t suggest that especially on a Dell 
laptop.

Workflow replacements:
* Virtualization: VMWare Fusion will run on Fedora, if I recall correctly. If 
you don’t specifically want VMWare, I would suggest qemu or even VirtualBox, as 
they’re much more friendly.

* Terminal: Konsole is an excellent and highly configurable terminal emulator. 
I use it on a daily basis, and I use the fish shell.

Screenshot:


* Screen capture: Plasma comes with a screenshot tool called Spectacle that 
supports the following capture modes:
Rectangular region
Full Screen (All Monitors)
Active Window
Window under Cursor
Current Screen

When you select Active Window or Window under Cursor, it hooks into the 
compositor to give you a screenshot of that window alone, optionally with the 
affects applied to it by the compositor, with or without borders, and with or 
without the cursor, among other options.

Screenshot:
https://www.kde.org/images/screenshots/resized/spectacle.png

* Email: I use KMail, which is part of KDE Plasma. KMail has excellent support 
for multiple addresses, OpenPGP, mailing lists, client-side anti-spam using 
the users’ choice of scripts, as well as managesieve support. I use it on all 
of my computers, because it is very robust. It can easily handle thousands of 
emails, as shown in the screenshot linked below.

Screenshot:
https://openblox.org/~johnmh/i/nobhZaYP6c.png

* Web browsing: I suggest Mozilla Firefox, but if you prefer Google Chrome, 
you can easily install it in Fedora. Some people, especially among the KDE 
crowd, complain that Firefox doesn’t fit the desktop environment, but you can 
decide for yourself. Firefox uses GTK+ themes, so if you do use KDE Plasma + 
Firefox, you’ll want to install a matching GTK+ theme. In Fedora, that’d be 
found in the breeze-gtk package, if you want to match one of the default 
themes.

Screenshot:
https://openblox.org/~johnmh/i/YI94WlTpnx.png

* Window resizing using Ctrl + Mouse Button: You can have exactly that with 
KDE. I use this myself, though I use Meta (Super key/Windows key/whatever you 
call it) + mouse button.

Screenshot:
https://openblox.org/~johnmh/i/nvzO52KycS.png

* Nextcloud: Fedora has both Nextcloud and ownCloud in their repos, and you 
can easily install either on most distros.

-- 
John M. Harris, Jr. <johnmh at openblox.org>

On Monday, May 22, 2017 10:14:03 AM EDT Ron Kelley via TriLUG wrote:
> Greetings all,
> 
> Looks like my Mac laptop will be “exchanged” for a Dell laptop at @dayjob,
> and I need to find a good Linux desktop environment to run (def not going
> to run windows natively).  I have been using a Mac for so long I don’t even
> know where to begin with the current Linux desktops.
> 
> My day-to-day workflow includes:
>  * VMWare Fusion (run Win7 for @dayjob stuff)
>  * Lots of terminal work (love iTerm2 for the Mac)
>  * Screen-capture tool (Snap-n-drag)
>  * EMail client (Mac mail)
>  * Web browsing (Chrome/Opera)
>  * Flexiglass (easily resize windows via CTRL+<mouse_button>)
>  * Nextcloud (file sharing)
> 
> A couple of things I like about the mac are the ability to hit CTRL+SPACE to
> bring up a quick launch manager (spotlight) and the ability to quickly
> preview jpgs via the <space> bar in the finder app.
> 
> I am hoping someone on the alias has gone through a Mac-to-Linux desktop
> shift and could offer some suggestions.  So far, I have looked at
> elementary OS, Mint, Gnome (via Ubuntu 16.04), and a few others.  While
> none can replicate the Mac experience, I am looking for something as
> similar as possible.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -Ron