[StuCo 98008]
GNU/Linux for Beginners
By the end of this lecture you will know
- A lot of buzzwords
- KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, BlackBox, TWM
- OpenOffice.org, KOffice, Abiword, Gnumeric
- Mozilla, Galeon, Epiphany, Konqueror, Firebird
- Grip, MPlayer, K3B, Gcombust
- GIMP, Dia, Kivio
- That there is no one “Linux” look or configuration.
- That choosing your poison can be a daunting task.
Desktop Environments
- Control your GUI's look & feel
- Menus
- Window decorations and handling
- Icons
- Applets
KDE
- Pros
- Absolutely fluffy
- Huge user base
- Excellent native applications
GNOME
- Pros
- Customizable
- Faster than KDE
- Native apps
WindowMaker
BlackBox
- Pros
- Very small and lightweight
- Can even be statically compiled for emergency toolkits.
Tab Window Manager
- Pros
- Negligible memory footprint
- Fast!
X Applications
- Browse the web
- Use email
- Chat online
- Listen to music – watch DVDs/VCDs
- Burn CDs
- Edit audio, video and still images
- Do work!
Web Browsers
Email Clients
Editors
Graphics/Imaging
Audio/Video
Word Processors
Spreadsheets
Networking
Choice: Bliss or Burden?
- New users are overwhelmed by breadth of choice
- Fail-safe configuration for newbies
- KDE
- Mozilla Web Browser & Email Client
- OpenOffice.org
- Special needs not compromised
- Nostalgics: “I'll die with TWM on my screen”
- Geeks: “I compiled GNOME from source and it loads in 1,2 seconds”
- Old hardware: “Mozilla takes 3 minutes to load with 8MB of RAM on my 100MHz box”
Final Notes
- 3GB on disk for OS + all of the above
- “Registry clutter” not an issue
- Installing/uninstalling one application does not affect the other
- Installing/uninstalling applications certainly doesn't affect the Operating System (!)
- Why do M$-IE and M$-Office start up so fast?
- "He who gives up functionality for ease of use loses both and deserves neither." (Anonymous)