My motivation for this comes from a couple things. Friends asking “Hey, how do you do … with your linux desktop?” and a recent viewing of a similar article on this guys blog - http://diveintomark.org/. On a side note, I like his writing style. Wait, here http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/26/essentials-2006 that's the ticket. You should read that. He is much move skilled at writing and his picks are 'different' from mine, with his own reasoning. Maybe they are more akin to your thinking. It's a worth while read. He appears to (primarily) be a writer where as I am (primarily) a programmer. Not to say that makes either of us better or worse it just helps explain some of our differences. He also uses some applications that I don't - like DV editing.
I'm writing this list.. right now! maybe.. So it's totally not complete. I use this wiki as my notepad and my notes are generally skattered and take days to complete.
Everybody has their flavor for their own reason. I started using Linux in early 1994 (I was almost 14 years old) with Slackware v1.0. I actually can vividly remember the purchase of it at a local computer store. I had no clue what I was doing but I had heard of it somehow and wanted to try it out - just for the sake of trying it out. I got it to install under some type of dos emulation mode and I had no clue what I was doing. I played with it for a bit and soon gave up. A few years later I got back into it and tried several distributions and somehow ended up using Redhat for a bit. Soon I tried even more, just about every one that existed at the time and oddly I ended up deciding Slackware was unbeatable. It was true to the roots of Linux and stable as could be. It was nerdy and hacky in a blackhat sorta way. It had cool default user names too. I used Slackware for 'several' years and though I would often try the new xyz distro none could ever pry me away from it's simple beauty. Now… I use Gentoo. While I do not have the long lasting admiration for it that I still hold for Slackware - It has features that are highly attractive to me. The package system they use it a thing of beauty all in itself. It's as cutting edge as you want to be and for me, that's a big plus. It doesn't have server and desktop and xyz packages. I find such things insanely laughable and appreciate the fact that Gentoo agrees with me. You don't have to install Gentoo version 10. You don't have to upgrade from version 9 either. Because there are no Gentoo versions. Linux distribution versions is another thing I find laughable. You really should try them all - or at least all the big popular distributions. If I was asked on the street what distro someone should use. I'd offer a couple of answers and in a almost religious fashion I would beg them to stray far from Redhat or any of it's variants. Redhat is to me, like a Linux verion of Windows. It's clunky, it's got everything moved around in funny places, it's got all these little tools that do stuff for you - half the time doing it wrong. Here's my list. Try them all.
* Ubunto (For a quick, painless install and instant Linux desktop)
* Debian (A little less quick - But Ubunto is built off this and it is highly regarded as one of the best distributions out there. Many software companies provide full support for Debian as well)
* Gentoo (It's nerdy, it's not easy, it can be down right painful to install. But there's a big pay off. It's 'fast' )
* Slackware (It's been around since the start, it's true to original linux style and it's simple. It's cool to just say I use Slackware. But it's also old and it shows)
* http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/ GREAT for CVS on /etc or such things. * http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/ Very handy for keeping those terminal sessions
http://www.kde.org/ I've used a lot of desktops. I like this one because I do.
Firefox.
Gee, it's a toss up for me right now. I've been using Kplayer mostly. Mplayer seems bland and vlc is just as equally bad. This new Miro thing looks neat.. Hmmn.
I am a 'strong supporter' of cross-platform applications. Pidgin (formally Gaim) works on everything I use. It's interface isn't the most sexy but it works. It connects to every type of messenger system that I use today, which is just MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and a couple IRC channels. I've been using it for 'several' versions and it has grown up a lot. For each system (Mac, Windows, Linux) there might be better applications such as Trillian and Aduim - But I don't like learning a new tool for every system I use.
While I've mostly migrated to newsgroup feeds for finding things I want. Ktorent works very well for those of you still torrenting.
While I still do the majority of my image work on my Vista laptop using Adobe tools I still want to be able to dig though them on my Gentoo desktop without breaking anything. I've tried F-Spot and it was not for me. It's simple I agree but there was pretty much no flexability or advanced (heck! even simple) features. It was very Gnomish and if you are a Gnome desktop user it might be just right for you. I needed more. I got digiKam and while it still doesn't do half of what I want it does do what it does very well. It will let me point it at my folder of images and it'll read all the .xmp data Adobe creates, it'll store everything of it's own in a SimpleSQL DB and it's pretty fast. It's mostly intuitive and - well it's just the best thing I've seen yet. For a collection of Snapshot, Vacation, etc style photos it's prolly got every thing you'd ever want. As a professional photographer it is missing some tools I need.
Well, On windows you have Photoshop. On Linux you have GIMP. If GIMP is too complex for your needs then Kdraw works nicely. digiKam even includes a basic editor that's pretty good for snapshot photo work.
Now if you just need a basic POP/SMTP or IMAP E-Mail client I would say Mozilla Thunderbird is a fantastic choice. I need to be able to connect to my companies Microsoft Exchange Server. For that I use Evolution and though it does seem to be a bit flaky time to time - overall it works very well. It's also faster then Outlook 2007 (which isn't saying much consider how SLOW Outlook 2007)
What?! No GNU Emacs? Nope. ViM is by far my favorite editor across every system I have ever used. I've learned all the short cuts and it's fast for me. It understands every programming language I've ever used to considered using. It's only failing point is the current lack of smb protocol support.
I have several computers! All on a different platform. My home pc, my laptop, my macmini, my work desktop, a handful of servers. I also have some information I want mirrored across some of them, synced with others, and just backups of other things. There's a lot of options, oh wait - no there's not. I found Unison and it's working very well for me. Every platform, SSH encyrption, works well on slow links and doesn't die on large datasets.
http://amarok.kde.org/ - Amarok. I have, roughly, 100 GB of music files. A mixture of formats from WMA, MP3, M4A, FLAC.. I need a power house audio management tool to make finding and playing what I want easy. Updating audio tags and the what not. I tried iTunes, MediaMonkey, WinAmp and while they are all very mature and capable applications none of them hold a candle to Amarok. The only part about Amarok that makes me sad is I can't install it on my windows computer and though I hear it works - installing it on my MacMini doesn't look very easy. I want it on my MacMini and I want FrontRow to support it :)