What to do with Linux? - Page 2

i have been looking for a good video player that plays wmv. anyone know a good one?

thanks

Mplayer plays anything and everything.

MPlayer I believe is based on Xine isnt it?

Anyways I think Xine will as well, I tend to use it for about anything myself

Seablade

Personally, I've had better luck with VLC (VideoLAN Client). However, YMMV.

Regards,

zakaluka2.

sylpheed for mail
firefox for web surfing
k3b for CD burning
azureus for BitTorent
kylix for programming
gpg for encryption

also if you are looking for other linux software check at http://www.sourceforge.net and http://freshmeat.net/ There are milions of them.

also if you want to learn it not only as a desktop system than you definetly have to know:
apache, php, mysqld, proftpd, openssh
Those five are "must-know"

than find me good software for electronic, like Protel :P

I know of a very good open source 3d rendering app called Blender, i now use it for everything architecture studio related, and am very impressed by its capabilities.

Blender3d.org
Blender.org

Sorry im too lazy to 'go advanced' and enter the urls.

Blender is a completly capable peice of 3d software. I am just getting into 3d work myself(Theater Scenic Designer) and have just started scratching the surface, but compared to Softimage and 3ds it isnt that bad, although I believe the Undo is a little lacking, but not terribly.

I have heard a rumor that softimage was ported to linux and is for sale now, would be interesting if that is true and to see how it compares against blender on its native platform.

There is also a good variety of sound software out there if you are in to that(Like me Post here and ill either redirect you or post some examples when I get to it Dont read here as much as I should.

Seablade

Distro, Applications and Learning

I've used quite a few Linux distributions and have the following recommendations.

If you are using Linux just for play, I would recommend MEPIS. It's very easy to install, and is based on Debian, for which there is an enormous community and lots of software to try out.

If you are doing a little work and a little play, you might try out Fedora Core. It's basically a community version of Redhat. It's very big and has a big community. Further, many commercial packages run fine on it.

If you are doing mostly work, I recommend Suse. There are some packages that require one of the "big" commerical distributions, and will basically only install on RetHat Enterprise or Suse. For example, I do a lot of development and Oracle would only install on Suse for me. Suse costs money, though you do get some decent support for your dollar. It was easily worth it to me.

Other software I would recommend:

Groupware: I really wanted to use Evoloution for my groupware, but it was fairly unstable and has very primitive HTML capaibilities, which meant my corporate standard email signature would not work. Also, it would just "stop working" from time to time. I moved over to Thunderbird and it is much more stable for me. The down side is that it does not have an integrated calendar, et al, yet (though they're working on pieces). I think if Evolution incorporated the Mozilla layout engine, I'd move back.

Office Suite: OpenOffice of course.

Desktop: KDE looks nicer, is more polished and more configurable, imo. I went with GNOME, though, because certain "core" programs for me were GTK apps (e.g., OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird). A lot of people don't care about this, so you may want to try out both. Most distributions will ask you at installation which you would like to use, and it might be a lot of fun to switch back and forth for a while.

As far as learning, I would personally take the following approach: Install Linux and do you stuff, whatever your stuff is. Gaming? Do gaming. Programming? Do programming. Graphics? Do graphics. Learn Linux in the course of doing your stuff.

Linux is pretty great. Have fun and be productive.