Published at LXer:

This tutorial shows how you can set up a PCLinuxOS 2010 desktop (with KDE) that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

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I keep seeing these "Perfect Desktop" that howtoforge keeps posting for various linux distro's. They are always the same though. I really wish they would pick a distro and say this is their opinion of the perfect distro. Or the perfect distro for a paticular scenario.

The one thing that bothers me the most is the redundant applications. If it is perfect, then there should be no need for redundant applications. I realize the author states it is so people have a choice, but if you are making a recommendation for "the perfect setup", take a stand.

I am a new convert of PCLinuxOS and think they should tailor their article to the distro. Why F-spot when digikam is (IMO) better? Why recommend Evolution & Thunderbird when Kontact/Kmail is so much better integrated into KDE4? Why use Vuze or aMule instead of Ktorrent? This just makes no sense. While I try to stay with purely QT applications, sometimes GTK based apps are superior. Here is what I think is the best selection of software for the average user:

Graphics:
GIMP
digiKam

Internet:
Firefox w/ Flash Player plugin
FileZilla (It's nice, but I get by just fine with Konqueror)
Kontact (email, calendar, tasks, address book)
KTorrent
Kopete
Skype ( I only recommend this because I don't know of anything else that does video calls with Windows reliably. Please let me know if you know of anything better!)
Konversation (IRC)

Office:
OpenOffice
Adobe Reader ( I only put this here to make this comment. Isn't Okular already installed? Why does anyone need Adobe Reader?)
skrooge (KDE financial app)

Sound & Video:
Amarok
MPlayer
ffmpeg
K9Copy
Kino
VLC Media Player
-Real Player (Woah, people still use Realplayer?)
K3B
Multimedia-Codecs
PS3Mediaserver (awesome media server! Works for streaming media to both PS3 & xbox360)

Other:
VirtualBox
Java
Read/Write Support for NTFS partitions
A much cleaner list without all the cruft. Oh, at one point the author states:Configure Online Software Repositories. I disagree with the method shown. PCLinuxOS has this great little tool called the repository speedtest. Use that and it takes care of it for you.

I didn't mean to be so long-winded, but for some reason this just really seemed to bug me.