Section B.1. Linux Desktop Applications for All Occasions


B.1. Linux Desktop Applications for All Occasions

Any attempt to use Linux as a desktop OS ultimately requires Linux desktop applications that are acceptable for your intended purpose. Although tools to run Windows applications are available in Linux (as described later in the Section B.3), these solutions are imperfect. If all you do is run Windows programs, you might as well use Windows as your OS.

Fortunately, an array of desktop applications are available for Linux, as summarized in Table B-1. Of course, not all these components are exactly equivalent. For instance, some of the Linux applications, such as mutt and cdrecord, are command-line tools, whereas the Windows applications are overwhelmingly GUI in nature. Exact features also differ, of course, and, in some cases, the basic purpose of tools aren't equivalent. For instance, mkisofs and cdrecord work together to create a CD-R, while X-CD-Roast and Eroaster provide GUI frontends to these tools. In Windows, CD-R creation tools are usually all-in-one packages that do everything. To learn more about any of these programs, perform a web search or check your Linux installation medium to see if the program comes with your distribution.

Table B-1. Application categories and exemplars

Application category

Windows examples

Linux examples

Office Suite

Microsoft Office, WordPerfect Office, StarOffice, OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, KOffice, GNOME Office

Bitmap Graphics Editing

Adobe Photoshop, the GIMP

The GIMP

Scanning Software

TWAIN, VueScan

SANE, Kooka, VueScan

CD-R Creation

Easy Media Creator Deluxe, Nero

mkisofs, cdrecord, X-CD-Roast, Eroaster, K3b

Multimedia Playback

Windows Media Player, Winamp, Real

XMMS, ALSA Player, mpg123, Real, xine

PDF Creation and Viewing

Acrobat and Acrobat Reader

Ghostscript, Acrobat Reader, XPDF

Web Browsing

Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera

Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror

E-Mail Client

Outlook and Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail

Evolution, Netscape Mail, Thunderbird, KMail, pine, mutt

Instant Messenging

AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Jabber, X-Chat

GAIM, KAIM, talk, Kopete, X-Chat

Web Site Creation

FrontPage, Dreamweaver

Quanta, Nvu


If you don't see an application category that you need in Table B-1, don't panic! This table is intended to provide only a few quick pointers for some of the most common desktop tools. Try performing a web search on the category name and Linux. You might also check your distribution, particularly if it provides a GUI installation tool with categorized sets of software. Many Linux sites, such as http://www.linux.org, http://www.sourceforge.net, and http://www.freshmeat.net, also provide pointers to Linux software by category.

One critically important Linux desktop software component doesn't appear in Table B-1: the desktop environment. This is a collection of toolsmost are fairly small by themselvesthat together create the familiar set of desktop icons, program-launch tools, and so on that users see when they log in to the computer. Windows provides only one common desktop environment, which is bundled into the OS. In Linux, you have a choice between GNOME, KDE, XFce, XPde, and others. This choice is covered in more detail in Section B.2.3.



    Linux in a Windows World
    Linux in a Windows World
    ISBN: 0596007582
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 152

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