Debian Desktop for a Joe Average
Hi there,
A friend of mine has had Windows installed for over a year. He's getting
somewhat sick of it due to the recent spate of virus and spyware that's
rendered his machine unusable. He's asked me to reinstall Windows, and
Linux in a dual boot configuration.
The problem is this; while I've been running Debian on the desktop for
over two years, a large proportion of the average Joe desktop stuff has
never graced my machine. I've never seriously looked at any hotplug,
automounting, gui configuration tools, hardware auto-detection, or any
of the other little things that make an OS 'easy' for non-tech people.
I'm hoping for a list of applications and software that people have come
across which has worked (properly) every time. I am doing my own
research, but I'm hoping other people may know something that I don't
find.
I'm aiming at a GNOME desktop, but am perfectly happy to recommend KDE
if the applications support is better.
* Things that I'm seeking information on specifically;
* Automount of CD's for KDE. (Gnome has magicdev)
* Automount / appear on desktop, of USB / firewire devices.
* Video editing/collection applications. The guy has a Sony digital cam,
and likes to rip and edit movies. Connects via USB and/or firewire.
* Versions of GNOME 2.x, and KDE 3.x that are stable - and that goes for
the bundled applications as well. I like the bleeding edge, but the
average user is not so forgiving.
* Automagical detection of hardware.
* Something to handle screen resolution changes.
* DHCP for the network, overridable by the ppp (dial-up modem)
connection that doesn't hold up the system if no DHCP server is
available.
* An apt-get shell that lists applications, rather than packages (this
probably doesn't exist).
* Basic image editing software (preferably not something as complicated
as the GIMP).
* Those apps and libs you don't notice until you discover you forgot to
install them - like gnome-spell.
* Anything anyone else can think of.
The hardware is as follows;
Athlon 1600, 256 MB DDR, nForce1 board, nForce1 sound, AGP GF4MX,
generic networking (Realtek I think).
Cheers
Edward Murrell
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