Linux Desktop

The Enlightenment Window Manager was also one of the first window managers I experimented with when I started using Linux back in the early 90’s. Windows decorations made this a top choice amongst the early Linux hackers, and the docking applets with the transparent terminal, ETerm was an added cool factor.

The project seems to be coming along slowly, but it does work. I was able to get Enlightenment working with the latest Ubuntu 8.04 beta, but some of the Ubuntu programs such as the desktop switcher were interfering with the Enlightenment switcher.

None the less, Enlightenment is still a cool window manager.

Red Hat was supposed to come out with a desktop version of Linux for the general consumer, but it seems they have a lack of motivation due to the Microsoft monster. Linux isn’t for the general public, and shouldn’t be attempted to be made so. Linux is a great operating system for businesses, corporations and hobbyist’s but is far from being a home consumer product. I say “home consumer product” because what I mean is, most home users have a family, and their bound to have a video gamer of some kind. There just isn’t very good gaming on the Linux platform. Granted, some of us can get most of the better games ( EVE Online ) working, but it’s not like it’s plug and play all the time.

With all that said, Linux is great for students, programmers, bloggers, columnists, editors, and general usage. If your not required to use Microsoft products, games or develop for Microsoft products, Linux could be a viable choice. Linux just isn’t ready for home use.

“The desktop market suffers from having one dominant vendor, and some people still perceive that today’s Linux desktops simply don’t provide a practical alternative,” Red Hat officials said in a blog post Wednesday.

“Building a sustainable business around the Linux desktop is tough, and history is littered with example efforts that have either failed outright, are stalled, or are run as charities,” they said.

Linux commands only about 1.2% of the desktop market in the United States, according to research group Gartner.

Red Hat said, however, that it would continue to develop its Enterprise Linux desktop.

Very fast movie player with support for almost all known and unknown multimedia formats. Most are supported natively, some with the support of binary codecs. It comes with many built-in audio and video filters that allow completely customizing video and audio. MPlayer also supports a lot of different audio and video output methods. Just to name a few: X11, Xv, SDL, OpenGL and more for video; ALSA, OSS, JACK, ESD,… for audio. For (re)encoding videos there is MPlayer’s companion program, MEncoder.

MPlayer is best used from the command line but also includes a GUI (GTK).

I have used MPlayer for a while now and I haven’t really had any major problems. Once in a great while I’ll run into a codec problem, but I seem to always find the correct codec someplace on the Internet. MPlayer can also save to a different format, which is nice for converting videos, however I would recommend something like ffmpeg for video conversion. MPlayer is probably the best rated video software available for Linux (Gnome).

Requirements
This application requires GTK+ version 1.2.x. Other dependencies include:
GTK only required for (non-Windows) GUI, version 2.x preferred. Do not forget to install the headers (-devel packages) for everything you want to be supported (like X11) when compiling from source.

AfterStep is a window manager for the Unix X Window System. Originally based on the look and feel of the NeXTStep interface, it provides end users with a consistent, clean, and elegant desktop. When I started my Linux exploration in the mid 90’s, Afterstep was the first Window manager that I used. Back then, I had to compile everything, including X Windows and my window manager.

Afterstep uses very little system resources, making it a really fast graphical user interface for Linux. The looks of Afterstep hasn’t changed much as you can see in the screenshot. You still have the square style menu, and the right click to context menu. I love it. One of the things that really drew me to this Window manager as my first, was the fact that it didn’t take long to compile. Trust me, compiling on 486 and old pentium computers was slow!

This is a brief overview of some major applications that help with the switch over from Windows to Linux. The switch is easy, installing a plug and play Linux distribution such as Ubuntu makes it a snap. You create a bootable cd, install Ubuntu, and your done. Most distributions will even automatically setup a dual boot so that you can still boot your Windows system. I still keep a small Windows installation just in case I need to play some Call of Duty for or some other Windows only game.
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