Right, so im a Linux n00b, as in ive never installed it..... i have used it at Uni however so i can use Bash terminals etc

What are the best pieces of softwaree to grab a copy of?

ie..

Media Player
Virus Scanner (if its needed)
Firewall (if its needed)
Mail Application (Thunderbird?)

Any advice would be great

Media Player
For Gnome, I really like Rhythmbox, its a bit of an itunes clone and does mp3, ogg, podcast subscriptions, and radio out of the box. Youll need to install gstreamer-mad via synapitic to get mp3 support.

Totem, if you install totem-xine is a nice vid player. Grab codecs from mplayer site, put them in /usr/lib/win32

Xmms or beep-media-player are basic and low resource audio players.

KDE recommendations would be a bit different.

Virus Scanner (if its needed)

If youre constantly sharing files with Windows, then perhaps, otherwise, dont worry and use common sense. There are no known Linux virii at this point in time.

Firewall (if its needed)

Stock install with a router is plenty for anybody short of paranoid.

If indeed you are compulsive and wash your hands bi-minutely, try Firestarter.

Mail Application (Thunderbird?)

T-bird or Evolution if you want a total Outlook clone.

K-mail for KDE users

Media Player - mplayer
Virus Scanner (if its needed) - not needed
Firewall (if its needed) - firestarter??
Mail Application (Thunderbird?) - evolution or thunderbird

mPlayer? Ew. I have it and only use it for the rare vid that doesnt work in anything else. The UI and playlist functionality is so 1995. :shudder:

Media Player: VLC + XINE front end for Totem.
Anti Virus: Clam AV (mainly for scanning windows files before sending them on in a forward or if I have a dodgy file I want to scan without possibly infecting myself)

Firewall: Firestarter front end for iptables.

Mail: Evolution combined with bogomail and spam assassin spam filtration

Quote from: maximusottermPlayer? Ew. I have it and only use it for the rare vid that doesnt work in anything else. The UI and playlist functionality is so 1995. :shudder:

its better than bloody totem

Totem w/ totem-xine and codecs plays 95% of porn available on the net. :mrgreen:

Often I just use plain Xine, still light years more configurable than mplayer.

Media Player : Kaffeine with Xine for Video, Amarok for Audio. (XMMS is a great Winamp clone too.)
Virus Scanner : No need, ClamAV if you feel like it.
Firewall: Firestarter or Guarddog.
Mail Application: Thunderbird.

Kaffeine and Amarok are fine if you run KDE as your primary desktop environment or dont mind using a bit of ram to fire up the qt libraries they depend upon.

Amarok is pretty amazing, if a bit porkly. Kaffeine I just hate, the UI is just a mess.

as a thumb of rule use google with synaptic open

browse the ubuntu forums with a childlike glee

Im just having a bash with pclinuxos and im pretty impressed.

Everything works  :shock: and you download the flavour for your graphics card so you have the driver already installed  :shock:  :shock:  synaptic too  :shock:  :shock:  :shock:

Give it a go, its a live CD you can install if you want to

After scrabbling round in a couple of areas i found out that Ubuntu came with the right driver for my graphics card but for some reason failed to add 1280x1024 and 1024x768 to the resolution sizes making it appear that it didnt have the right driver..... sorted it now tho using

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

followed the steps then

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

w00 me!

Oh and im using an AMD64 box..... making it a pig to get Flash PLayer etc working..... im getting there tho!!

did you put in your monitors horizontal/verticle refresh rate?

Dang, 1280x1020 is about the most normal size their is.


PCLOS is pretty amazing, but a little fragile and porkly the last time I used it. Could have changed. Great for noobs, and technically illegal in most countries due to numerous violations.

Quote from: maximusotterDang, 1280x1020 is about the most normal size their is.


PCLOS is pretty amazing, but a little fragile and porkly the last time I used it. Could have changed. Great for noobs, and technically illegal in most countries due to numerous violations.

It seems fine now. apart from gnome needs bloody updating

im currently using it without any problems