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[Drek]

Running Debian Linux, Sarge distro, with X Windows and Gnome on top. Have Firefox as my browser, just got VLC to play videos, and Gaim for instant messaging. Anyone recommend any programs? Anything really, I'm hoping to find some desktop themes that will make my desktop look like OS X (my girl is a mac lover, it'll help her adjust), as well as emulators (namely SNES) and any generally cool Linux programs that I should have.

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[Ruzbeh]

I use Totem, which is like Windows Media Player. It works great, even menus work with DVDs. Also, you can make it work with Firefox when there's videos in a webpage and stuff. Also, you can make Gnome look like Mac OS X, but only slightly. You can use gdesklets to get yourself a Mac OS X transparent bar thing at the bottom. I recommend Beep-media-player over XMMS.

 

[Drek]

Come on, 37 views and only one reply? Thanks Ruzbeh, I'll be grabbing some of those this evening.

 

[Teknopathetic]

Quite honestly, MPlayer is the greatest linux movie player in existence, IMO. www.mplayerhq.hu .


AmaroK is an awesome, awesome MP3 player, comes with KDE, so if you installed KDE, it's already on your machine. I also prefer Kopete over Gaim for nistant messaging.

www.kdelook.org has lots of extra wallpapers, themes, etc. (for KDE, of course)

 

[Ruzbeh]

Quite honestly, MPlayer is the greatest linux movie player in existence, IMO. www.mplayerhq.hu .

NO. I've used mplayer for almost a year. I dismissed Totem and some more Gnome stuff as bloated but Totem has a crapload of things. It's so easy and fast. It may not have the stuff mplayer has, but it has tons of features.

However, it is definately worth a try. Mplayer by default (I think it's by default) plays video without a GUI. This is real nice, but Totem does this even better. All you do is press H and the GUI disappears and you can get it back by just pressing H again. I don't think Mplayer allows switching back and forth like that. But I guess I could be wrong.

Also, Totem uses GTK2. Mplayer uses... well, it doesn't use GTK2, so the style looks real bad and it doesn't seem to integrate with Gnome. Which I have a real problem with. KDE programs don't use GTK2 either, but Qt. Qt = lame.

 

[Hitokage]

Music: amaroK (JuK comes with KDE, not amaroK)
Video: MPlayer, or various xine wrappers (Also, Linux RealPlayer is extremely well behaved)
IM: Kopete
Web: Mozilla/Firefox, Opera
IRC: X-Chat, for now anyway...
Torrent: Official Client, Azureus
Emulators: ZSNES, FCE Ultra, Gens, XMAME, dosbox
CD/DVD Burning: K3B
Quick Audio Editing: Audacity
More Pro-level stuff: Audour, Rosengarden
Image editing: You're kinda stuck with The GIMP on this one, unless you have Win4Lin with Photoshop or something.
Possibly cool program I haven't tried: Komposé(as in Exposé).
Video Card not to have: Radeon 9600 or newer.

NO. I've used mplayer for almost a year. I dismissed Totem and some more Gnome stuff as bloated but Totem has a crapload of things. It's so easy and fast. It may not have the stuff mplayer has, but it has tons of features.

Totem's just another xine wrapper, and xine doesn't have as much or as good of codec support. Of course, it does do DVD menus so that's a plus.

Also, Totem uses GTK2. Mplayer uses... well, it doesn't use GTK2, so the style looks real bad and it doesn't seem to integrate with Gnome. Which I have a real problem with.

No less than XMMS. Both have skin GUIs, although I personally just associate movie files with the commandline(and have controls set up on my mouse and remote control). BTW, the keyboard controls(space=pause, arrow keys=seek) ALWAYS work.

KDE programs don't use GTK2 either, but Qt. Qt = lame.

:lol

 

[Blimblim]

For a desktop you should have gone the Ubuntu way. Debian is great (I use it on more than 15 servers at work) but it gets frustrating quickly because you won't get the latest versions of the programs.

 

[Ruzbeh]

Totem's just another xine wrapper, and xine doesn't have as much or as good of codec support. Of course, it does do DVD menus so that's a plus.

No less than XMMS. Both have skin GUIs,

Totem plays as many files as mplayer, afaik. I have these codecs (apt-get install w32codec I think) and it allows me to play every video out there. Also, in Totem you can switch easily what language and turn on/off subtitles. It's perfect.

XMMS uses GTK1.2 or something AFAIK, beep-media-player uses GTK2. XMMS = lame.

 

[fallout]

I have these codecs (apt-get install w32codec I think) and it allows me to play every video out there.

Yeah, I did the same thing. For awhile, my Linux box could handle more media formats than my Windows machine running XP, heh.

 

[FiRez]

For a desktop you should have gone the Ubuntu way. Debian is great (I use it on more than 15 servers at work) but it gets frustrating quickly because you won't get the latest versions of the programs.

Then just use the latest unstable builds.
I agree about Ubuntu, is great for desktop

 

[Ruzbeh]

Then just use the latest unstable builds.

I heard unstable is called unstable for a damn good reason. Going for testing is safer.

 

[Drek]

Thanks for all the recommendations! I'm gonna try Ubuntu because I was gonna do a new install on another system anyhow. Thanks for the app recommendation too.

 

[swoon]

amarOK is the best dammed music player ever.

 

[Bizarro Sun Yat-sen]

Wouldn't using both Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt applications entail having both sets of libraries resident in memory much of the time, meaning substantial extra space overhead? So far I've avoided anything Qt-based in my current installation. My reasons for choosing Gnome over KDE were:

1. KDE app names offend my delicate sensibilities
2. A previous attempt to install KDE (on a rickety combination of Debian unstable packages and ad hoc compiles from source) led to the entire system becoming unusable
3. Screenshots of KDE desktops make the thing look even more bloated than Gnome, and generally frighten me
4. Warm fuzzy GNU associations.

Clearly, KDE expects users to do things other than for frivolous reasons. This is in my view untenable.

 

[Teknopathetic]

Swoon: so true.

 

[Hitokage]

Bizarro: KDE allows people to configure the crap out of it, so you're definitely going to get some people who throw everything but the kitchen sink on their desktop. By default it does resemble windows, but its window management is just as powerful as Enlightenment(damn I DESPISE Metacity)... and you can even make it Mac-like to some extent if you wanted. Besides, KDE app intregration is top notch, and it's always fun playing with DCOP(eg. anything can be tied to a mouse gesture). Also, and this is key IMO, KDE has a history of actually improving with every release.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. There is a KDE wrapper for MPlayer, but I haven't used it in a long time.

 

[Kuroyume]

They need to make a linux version of foobar...

Btw, anyone have any suggestions on how to make website fonts look just as good as the fonts on Windows XP? This forum looks like horse shit on linux.

I've been using UBUNTU since last week btw, so I'm a noob.

 

[Teknopathetic]

Kuroyume: AmaroK kinda makes Foobar moot, unless you're just really really partial to foobar (I'm not).

I also just hopped on the Ubuntu boat and I'm digging it a lot.

 

[Bizarro Sun Yat-sen]

Btw, anyone have any suggestions on how to make website fonts look just as good as the fonts on Windows XP? This forum looks like horse shit on linux.

Try enabling anti-aliasing if you haven't already. Apart from that...

You can use Truetype fonts from an MS-Windows installation, but they probably won't render very well at small sizes because most GNU/Linux distributions have the font rendering engine (FreeType) set up to ignore the hinting information TrueType uses to slightly distort the outlines of small fonts to better align with the pixel grid. A free FreeType module to interpret the hinting instructions actually does exist, but it's usually not included due to its uncertain legal status (Apple holds patents on the TrueType hinting language and its implementation)