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Re: Move to Linux
-Linux distro (looking at Red Hat 9)
Definetly Red Hat 9 Mozilla Mail -Internet (preferably fast, tabbed) Mozilla, Galeon, or Opera -Office suite similar to M$ Office (OpenOffice.org 1.1?) Open Office -FTP Program gftp - comes with gnome -HTML/PHP Editor Bluefish http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/ -PDF Reader Xpdf -CD Burning and CDRW Packet Writing (should support VCD, images, etc.) (currently Nero 5.5) GNOME Toaster -AOL IM Gaim is good but so is the one that comes with Netscape -MSN IM (is this possible?) amsn http://amsn.sourceforge.net -C/C++ Development and Setup Creator Anjuta http://anjuta.sourceforge.net -Macromedia Shockwave/Flash Player Macromedia's shockwave. Each browser has a different way to install it. -Zip/File Compressor/Decompressor fileroller - with gnome |
"antivir" is a good antivirus program. It is free. It runs via command line, and so this may take getting used to. To scan the whole machine, enter antivir -s /* which will scan the whole machine. Do this in superuser mode (aka root). This program is included for free in SuSE, and most likely in Mandrake or RedHat. As for which OS to get, one of the aforementioned three would be best. I have used Mandrake, SuSE, and Corel in the past. Corel no longer exists, but has been reformed as Xandros. I quite liked Corel, and imagine that Xandros would be good. Xandros is a Debian-based, more user-friendly disto (as was Corel). For a newbie I imagine the actual Debian would be too difficult. Both SuSE and Mandrake were "reasonably" easy (Linux in general takes getting used to). I prefered SuSE, however, but Mandrake was good too. Because SuSE is German made, there are some small catches to it (ie, its printer set-up defaults to A4, not letter.) Easy to change via YAST, once you know what you're doing). Both Mandrake and SuSE have very so-so help from their respective companies. Smaller companies, like Libranet, have gotten back to me quickly (I've never used Libranet, but have enquired about it) For more information, check out this film: Educational film about Linux
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I was thinking, can I use any VNC client/server to communicate both ways with a Windows PC?
Thanks. |
Re: Move to Linux
-Linux distro (looking at Red Hat 9)
SuSE 9.0 Evolution, Kontact, KMail, Sylpheed... -Internet (preferably fast, tabbed) Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera, Galeon -PDF Creation All Linux-applications (using kprinter as printerfrontend) OpenOffice ps2pdf command (every application can print to a ps file, use this command to convert it to pdf -Office suite similar to M$ Office (OpenOffice.org 1.1?) OpenOffice.org -FTP Program KBear, GFTP, Konqueror, etc.. -HTML/PHP Editor Quanta, Bluefish, VNU, OpenOffice, Mozilla Composer -Anti-Spyware/Adware Not neccessary -Advanced multichannel audio mixing/editing (currently Adobe Audition 1.0) Rosegarden (?) -PDF Reader KWord (also editing) , Acrobat Reader, KGhostview Kpdf -CD Burning and CDRW Packet Writing (should support VCD, images, etc.) (currently Nero 5.5) K3b is very good for burning CD/DVD, please look at http://packet-cd.sourceforge.net/instructions.php3 for more details about packet writing -AOL IM -MSN IM (is this possible?) (yes) Kopete, Gaim, etc. -Cursor/Icon Creation Gimp, kiconedit. -Screen Saver Creation probably possible, no idea with wich application. -Color Grabber (gets hex codes for colors displayed on the screen-use an eyedropper to select a color anywhere on the screen.) kcoloredit, kcolorchooser (both default present in KDE as tool and applet) -Video Editing (preferably advanced) MainActor (same as Windows-version) -RSS Feed Reader knewticker (default in KDE) -Spam Filter SpamAssasin (easy to use with filters in kmail) -Image Mapper (HTML) Konqueror -Multimedia player (WMA, Windows-compatible media files, MP3, DVD, etc.) Xine, MPlayer (and lots of frontends for both players, like kmplayer, kplayer, kaffeine, etc..) -C/C++ Development and Setup Creator KDEvelop, QT Designer, etc.. -Multimedia Presentations -Disk Defragmenter Not neccessary, linux file systems only fragmentate when there is less then 10% disk space left. -Desktop Notes (Like Post-it Notes) knotes (default in kde) -Macromedia Shockwave/Flash Player The flas-pugin is available for netscape, all other browsers use netscape plugins. shockwave director is not available for linux. -VNC available (default in kde) Also Windows RPC protocol is available (in kde 3.2) -Screen Capture to SWF, AVI, GIF, still images Gimp, ksnapshot (default in kde) -Grep grep -Zip/File Compressor/Decompressor from the commandline: zip, bzip2, tar, gzip, etc. etc. etc. Using GUI: Karchiver, Ark (default in KDE) -Firewall iptables (default in Linux) There are lots of frontends to configure iptables, like guarddog (www.simonzone.com) And, do they have Linux drivers for these devices: -Palm handheld (USB) -Creative "PC-DVD" Remote Control (Serial) -External DVD Drive (USB) -Logitech QuickCam (Old Version) (USB) -Creative Nomad IIc MP3/WMA Player (USB) -Pinnacle Deluxe Video Capture Device (USB) -PNY SmartMedia Card Reader (USB) I think they all should work, please check out the hardware support database of your favorite distro. Possibly, surround sound driver! afaik it is present. I'd prefer open-source or free solutions as well. Except for mainactor and acrobat reader, all solutions I presented are opensource. AFAIK everything in my list is available on the installation disks of RedHat (except for mainactor, which is part of SuSE 9.0, or available for approx $ 250,00) |
Wow, this is a doozy of a question! First off, let me say that your install of Linux doesn't necessarily get all gunked up like a Windows install what with sloppy registry handling, etc. So you can install two options you're considering and keep the one you like to no detriment.
-Linux distro (looking at Red Hat 9) I would go with Red Hat 9 to begin with. You might want to try out Debian and Arch Linux when you have more experience with the whole thing. I find rpm-based distros (RH, Mandrake, Suse) to be infuriating, but they're excellent for beginners. Arch Linux, once configured is effortlessly maintainable, as is Debian. Configuring them is harder though, so hold off on them for now. I use Thunderbird, but it you're using Gnome, I think balsa would be good. Also, Evolution is like Outlook, with a Calendar, etc. -Internet (preferably fast, tabbed) Firefox is my favorite, again gnome has its browser -Office suite similar to M$ Office (OpenOffice.org 1.1?) I think OpenOffice.org is the way to go. I like Abiword a little more than OpenOffice for simple Word-style editing, but I think ooo is more powerful. -FTP Program gftp -HTML/PHP Editor bluefish is an excellent text editor that recognizes many filetypes and color-codes your file for you. For wysiwyg HTML, peacock is all I've even looked at. -Advanced multichannel audio mixing/editing (currently Adobe Audition 1.0) Audacity, Rosegarden. I think rosegarden is better, but tougher to get working, in my experience. -PDF Reader xpdf -CD Burning and CDRW Packet Writing (should support VCD, images, etc.) (currently Nero 5.5) Xcdroast is the shiznit. I don't know about the gnome burner mentioned by someone else. GAIM is the only way to go for IMs -Video Editing (preferably advanced) Kino. If you go to their site, they link to other sites too, so it should be helpful. http://kino.schirmacher.de/ -RSS Feed Reader There are a million of them. If you decide on gnome you can have an RSS ticker integrated into your panel (taskbar-thingy) -Multimedia player (WMA, Windows-compatible media files, MP3, DVD, etc.) 1. XMMS. 2. Rhythmbox is nice, based on the theory of iTunes music player, but it's not all that robust yet. -Disk Defragmenter You...uh...don't have to? Another reason to love Linux! -Desktop Notes (Like Post-it Notes) You've got to search. There are a few out there, there are panel applets, browser plugins, bleah. I don't know. You could use evolution, which is a mail client a la Outlook (Calendar, reminders) -Grep grep (damn, I'm clever aren't I?) Seriously you can: cat youfile | grep whachuwannafind It's the pimp-shizzle -Zip/File Compressor/Decompressor Linux has got em. And, do they have Linux drivers for these devices: Smartcard readers are a standard, so yes. Palm, I betcha external DVD, I wouldn't doubt it USB camera, you might have to get a new one. Nomad, yes, I think it's supported like any external usb mass storage device. Pinnacle Video Capture, hmmm. I really don't know. As far as drivers go, that's where Linux is sometimes a lot of work. You can usually get ANYTHING to work (including fun stuff like Mac-formatted hard disks), you just have to go out and do your own investigation. Anyway, I don't know if my post helped any. Good luck, and welcome to our side. :jawa: :D |
vnc is vnc, no matter where you go :)
In fact, you might find some neat extras in linux vnc that you didn't see in windows. Have you seen the multiple desktops in kde and gnome? Seems kind of pointless at first, untill you realise that you can actually use those as OTHER DESKTOPS! You can log into other computers and pipe the display to desktop 2, have a remote system log display on desktop 3, etc. imho, the biggest difference between distros is their package management and what they include with the default distibution. Some (rh, mandrake, suse) use rpm packages, while others (debian, xandros, mepis) use deb's, while others (slackware, and ... others that I can't remember) use simple tar'ed gnu-zips (just like a zipped-up directory). .tar.gz's or .tgz's are usually source code, ready to be compiled with a few make commands. The other difference is what kind of customization and proprietary programs that the company will distribute with your system. Suse provides yast- yet another setup tool. Yast is pretty useful, but incredibly bloated and slow. Suse works "out of the box" pretty consistantly, but it's also heavily altered from "linux standards" if there is such a thing. Fedora core is another that's good "ootb", but their theory on providing packages is somewhat limiting for a home user. While they provide, say, xmms (winamp clone- even uses the classic skins), they won't provide the mp3 codecs, because these are proprietary, not open source. Try them all, and find the ones you like. My reccomendations are debian (at least a debian-based distro. Debian takes a lot of configuration and tweaking to get working right), red-hat (it's standard, it works, it has good packages, and good gui's), xandros for laptops(the only one i've gotten to work with double-tapping my touchpad and using my wireless card), and slackware. good luck. |
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