| A Practical Guide to get started using Linux |
by Wily Yuen
Wily Yuen has authored a great overview for getting started using Linux on your PC. Yuen, a Linux user since July, points to key applications and tools that will help you enhance your user experience. The guide that follows is a great addition to your bookmarks as a reference guide to using Desktop Linux . . .
A Practical Guide to get started using Linux
by Wily Yuen
Last year was good for open source and Linux. The maturity of the 2.4 kernel, the 1.0 release of the Mozilla web browser and OpenOffice.org office suite, the proliferation and vast improvements among many other open source projects and technologies has positioned 2003 as the Year of Desktop Linux.
There are already many articles around the web discussing what Linux needs to improve to secure a stronghold on the desktop but I am going to focus on (1) what resources we already have, (2) what interesting and great stuff will be released in 2003, (3) offer some resources and discussion which can help you navigate in your journey to begin using and enjoying Linux on the desktop.
Resources in place
Since I use Mandrake 9 ('mdk') exclusively as my desktop, the following resources and links are mostly applicable to 'mdk9'. To search for more details about other distributions you can search in rpmfind.net, freshrpms.net (for Red Hat) or if you are using Debian or Gentoo, use 'apt-get' or 'emerge'.
PCLinuxOnline.com also hosts links to various RPM packagers (see the left column of the site, under the title "RPM Outlet").
RatedPC.com hosts a (really!) great article Linux On Desktop, check it out if you have not already done so.
A note on rpms for Mandrake:
For those who use Mandrake distribution, you will find that there are many packaged rpms available. There are several sources:
- Contribs:
the source of other open source software compiled for mdk distributions that did not make it into the 3 CDs download edition.
Ftp sites for Contribs are here and here
- PLF: Penguin Liberation Front lair, also creates packages compiled for mdk, however for license and other legal reasons (such as xine DeCSS DVD player); these packages did not and probably will not make it into the Mandrake CD distributions. Note that while the Contribs rpms will come with the DVD/box version of Mandrake, most of the PLF rpms never will, unless the legal or license issue is somehow resolved.
plf.zarb.org
ftp.club-internet.fr/pub/linux/plf (France mirror)
- Texstar 'rpms'
Texstar is the host of the Linux website PC Linux Online.
He personally contributed many nice rpms for the Mandrake distribution.
- Mandrake Club
These rpms are usually not available in public, they are a privilege for Mandrake Club members. I believe many audio applications belong to this category. Or if you know your way you can always compile from the source.
For those who use Mandrake 9, this site provides several good tutorials on enhancing its desktop capability -- trylinuxSD.com
Resources to enhance you desktop:
Fonts & Themes:- Corefonts package
This is part of the Microsoft True Type Font set for Windows. Sometime in August 2002 MS removed it from their web site, but the EULA allowed it to be distributed in unaltered form.
The corefonts project is created and the MS fonts are hosted in the sourceforge mirrors so that everyone can download those MS fonts and use it under Linux (notably the fonts in KDE/Gnome, Mozilla.org and OpenOffice.org). You do NOT need to have a copy or license of Windows to use the corefonts package.
Corefonts
A similar project is hosted here
You can also import fonts from your Windows partition if you have a dual boot system. For mdk, 'drakfont' will do the job.
NEW -- Bitstream's beta version of the freely available fonts -- the result of a recent agreement with the GNOME Foundation, are now available for a preview.
- KDE/GTK/Gnome Theme Modification
This is just to customize the look and feel of your KDE desktop. Keramik, Apple Aqua or even MS Windows XP themes are available. For more information, check out KDE-look.org.
Mdk rpms available from: Texstar [Mainlink to access them is here]
Files and descriptions:
- Keramik Theme (keramik-3.0.3-3tex.i586.rpm)
- Bluecurve Theme from RedHat (freecurve-artwork-0.47-1tex.i586.rpm)
- Crystal Icon set (crystal-icons-0.8.0-2tex.i586.rpm)
- Geramik Theme (mdk Contribs rpm: Geramik-*.*.i586.rpm)
[Note: Both Keramik theme and Crystal icon set will become the default theme/icon for KDE 3.1.]
Web Access:
A note on installing mozilla.org plugins
After installing Java runtime JRE 1.4.1, you need to create a symlink in the browser/plugins directory. It can be one of those: /usr/lib/mozilla-1.1/
/usr/local/mozilla/
~/.mozilla/
To create a symlink, type in terminal:
su
cd (any mozilla path of above)/plugins
ln -s /usr/java/j2re1.4.1_01/plugin/i386/ns610/libjavaplugin_oji.so .
In UNIX/Linux, the configuration/setting located in your user/home directory will override the global setting. If you place the symlink in ~/.mozilla/plugins
it will be used by any mozilla.org installed on the system.
Hence you can keep the default mozilla-1.1 installed by mdk9, while installing any build of mozilla (for instance 1.3 alpha) in /usr/local/mozilla directory. Both of them can access the same plugins in your home directory at
~/.mozilla/plugins.
Moreover, you can simply place symlinks of all plugins over there, without worrying where you have installed the plugins and such. This is also a good way to disable a particular plugin (eg. for debugging) because it's easier to remove a symlink in your home directory.
System & Archive: - zip-2.3.9 (from mdk9 cd)
- RAR Linux (RARLab official homepage)
- LHA rpm (mdk rpms)
Want to extract the '*.zip', '*.rar' or '*.lzh' format inherited from Windows/DOS archives on Linux? By installing these packages you can gain access to, or even create them on Linux. Ark (from Qt/KDE) will recognize and use them automatically after installation.
- setcd (RH rpm)
For some very high speed cd-rom, this utility can slow down the reading speed to reduce noise (and probably reading error) in CD spinning.
- Other CD-Writing app: K3D,Arson
I personally use GCombust, so I haven't tried those; but I heard many good things about them. You can find the rpm packages at rpmfind.net.
- AbiWord (mdk Contribs rpm: abiword-1.0.2-1mdk.i586.rpm)
I like using Abiword: it's a fast and elegant word processor. Strangely, it's not included in the mdk9 3-cd set, while RedHat has it installed by default.
Multimedia, Gaming and Development
- Video & Streaming Media
- Real Player + mozilla plugins (Texstar rpm: realplayer-8.0-2tex.i586.rpm, mozilla-realplayer-8.0-1tex.i586.rpm )
- Cinelerra (mdk PLF rpm: cinelerra-1.1.0-1plf.i586.rpm)
The excellent video editor on Linux (see screenshot below).
- Film Gimp
As the brother of GIMP, Film Gimp is a motion picture editing tool primarily used for painting and retouching of movie images. More details are available from the site.
- Xine & Mplayer Update
For more information on playing DVD on Linux, you can check out this article -- GNU/Linux DVD Player Review, by Jon Kent at LinuxJournal, Jon Kent
Note 1: The Xine version that comes with mdk9 is
0.9.13, some of the rpms from PLF are for verion 1.0beta-0, make sure you install the xine plugins for the former version. Also there are Win32, DiVX, Xvid, DeCSS plugins+codecs available. The Win32 plugin+codec will allow you to access Windows movie formats! Now you can
enjoy movie/game trailers on Xine as your buddies on Windows can. The same goes for Mplayer.
Note 2: MPlayer plugin support for Konqueror/Mozilla/Phoenix (New!)
- Audio enhancement
- MIDI - For SB Live User:
'awesfx' & 'awesfx-devel' package (from mdk9 cd)
alsamixergui-0.9.0-0.5rc1_2mdk (from mdk9 cd)
You can perform MIDI playback as good as you did on Windows, with soundfont support! This article illustrates the steps to do so -- SB Live/Audigy MIDI mini-how-to with ALSA
If you connect 4 speakers to your SB Live, you will need the 'alsamixergui' package to enable surround sound with the two rear speaker output.
- playmidi, playmidi-X11 (from mdk9 cd)
For non-SB Live users, playmidi can perform midi playback on your system, it supports SB16, GUS, AWE32/64 (so does the previous 'awesfx' package), external MIDI. However, it's a commandline-only tool; another author and I are working on an XMMS-playmidi plugin (actually I only did
some testing and reporting error :p), so stay tuned . . .
- Broadcast 2000 (from mdk9 cd, source)
Broadcast 2000 is a full-feature video-audio editor, released in 2000. At that time it was pretty advanced and even being used by some movie studio to do some serious work - but that's exactly what got it into trouble: from what I've heard, it seemed that someone who used it in
big-budget production wanted the author to hold responsible for liabilities (remember all GNU/GPL software tools are come with no warranty), which the author would not or could not afford to do so, hence he removed it from his site. Now it is being replaced by Cinelerra (see above).
However, Broadcast 2000 still performs very good as an audio editor. As it comes with Mandrake, you might just want to play with it.
- xmms-alsa, xmms-writer (from mdk9 cd)
Two xmms output plugins: xmms-alsa will use alsa (instead of OSS compatibility mode) as the output interface, while xmms-writer will write .wav file to your harddrive instead of audio playback.
- Rosegarden, Audacity, Noteedit, Ardour and many other excellent audio apps. See this link.
Below is a screenshot for Rosegarden-4 0.8.5:
My sister is using Rosegarden to compose and arrange her MIDI music!
- Turnkey Linux Audio
Turn Key Linux Audio is a rich collection of audio packages for Mandrake Linux 9, for more detail please refer to this article -- Turn-Key Linux Audio.
2D & 3D Graphic- sodipodi (Sourceforge RH & mdk rpms download page)
Vector Illustrator on Linux using SVG Format. It works and looks very promising. Below is a screenshot.
- Blender 3D
- Moonlight3d
These are some of the open source 3d packages available on Linux. In particular, Blender3D became open source in October 2002. Even these packages are relatively small (compared to the big 3d commercial packages), don't overlook their excellent features and speed. You might
be surprised when looking at a screenshot of a scene rendered by them. There are other 3d packages and independent renderers out there; hang around certain 3d forums and you will find them.
- Houdini Apprentice learning edition
Games:- PSX Emulator: ePSXe and PCSX Linux (Check out this link for more detail)
Zsnes (from mdk Contribs rpm: zsnes-1.36-2mdk.i586.rpm)
xMame, Visual Boy Advance (from mdk PLF Cooker)
Game Demos: Return to Wolfenstein
Free Games: Fallen Block Game, FooBillard, pyDDR
Others
- Wine (from mdk9 cd, or compile from source)
- WineX from CVS
Wine and WineX will allow you to run *some* Windows applications and games on Linux.
- Kylix 3 Open Edition
The Visual Development environment from Borland on Linux, supports both Delphi and C++.
With these new packages installed I hope you will have a smoother desktop experience with Linux.
About the author: Wily Yuen is a new Linux user switched from Windows since July 2002. He holds a degree of Industrial Engineering from University of Hong Kong. He has growing interest on Linux since switching and plans to work on more open source and Linux-related projects in the future.
Copyright © 2003 by Wily Yuen. Reproduced by DesktopLinux.com with permission.
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