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Do you really need MP3, WMA and AAC files?
See all of the LOLs and FAILs Peng has created for the Cheezburger Network. You can also see them on Peng's site at ICHC.
7 July 2010 at 3:33 pm
First and foremost: All Gnome apps work in KDE, and the Gnome-in-KDE integration does not suck as much as the KDE-in-Gnome one does. You can still use all your Gnome apps if you want to.
- Compiz: Compiz works in KDE just as well as it does in Gnome, but you can also try KWin, it has a lot of Compiz’s niceties with the added KDE integration.
- Emerald: You can use Emerald in KDE, or you can use kde4-window-decorator. Same as Compiz, it works just as well, but has more KDE integration (meaning that you can configure it in the KDE settings)
- Avant Window Navigator: Avant works in KDE. If you want a KDE solution, Daisy is the closest to a dock you can get (it has a lot of non-dock modes as well, make sure to configure it); otherwise, any Gnome-ish dock will do (I’m using Cairo-dock)
- Startup Applications: There’s a panel for that in the preferences.
- Widgets: Plasmoids. There’s a ton of them.
- Gnome Do: krunner does the job most of the time (Alt+F2 by default) but it’s certainly not as powerful as Gnome Do. You can still use Gnome Do if you want to.
- Wallpaper changer: The default wallpaper configuration is very powerful. You can set it to a video or a slideshow with fades or a starfield overlay or an interactive 3D earth or whatever you want.
- Web browser: Honestly, I think you’re better off using Chrome or Firefox here. Konqueror kind of sucks, unless you really crave the integration.
- Email: I hear Kmail is good, but I use Gmail’s web interface anyway.
- OpenOffice.org: Works fine in KDE, and has had some KDE integration in the latest Kubuntu release. KOffice 2 is shaping up nicely, you can give it a shot as well, but it lacks in compatibility.
- Text editor: I love Kate. It can do so much than it looks like it can.
- Dictionary: There’s a plasmoid for that.
- Screenshot: ksnapshot
- Graphics editor: I suggest you stick with GIMP for now. The UI actually sucks a bit less than it does in Gnome, because of KWin’s tabbed windows, so you can have tabs in GIMP.
- Vector graphics: Again I suggest you stuck with Inkscape, but I don’t do vector graphics so I wouldn’t know.
- Image viewer: Gwenview is nice, loads up quickly and can do quick edits if you don’t feel like launching GIMP
- Color picking: There’s a plasmoid for that
- File manager: Dolphin is nice indeed
- FileMan Scripts/Actions: Dolphin’s context-menu is customizable and you can add your own scripts to it, but I haven’t looked into it.
- Coverflow: Do you seriously need that? Amarok has “Coverbling” for a similar effect.
- File storage: Stick with Dropbox until ownCloud or Ubuntu One show up. Note that you can use still Ubuntu One, Dropbox, or “headless Dropbox” (no GTK)
- Instant messaging: Kopete is nice but I stick with Pidgin cause that’s where all my log files are.
- Media Player: You cannot beat Amarok… Once you can get used to it.
- MPD client: Sorry, dunno about that
- MP3 Tag Editor: Amarok’s tag editor works well (and can edit in-line), but if you want a dedicated app you can still use EasyTag or whatever.
- CD ripper: K3B is also unbeatable
- Audio editor: Audacity, not much of a choice there
- Video editor: Give Kdenlive a try; or any of the Gnome video editors work just fine as well
- Media converter: That’s one of the things best left to a command-line tool in my opinion. Don’t know about any GUI to do that, on Gnome or KDE.
- File comparison: Once again something I usually leave to the command-line (diff), but you can try Kompare
- BitTorrent: KTorrent is awesome, and actually stays current. Case in point, it is the first open-source BitTorrent client to implement uTP.
- Disc burning: K3B again
- Screensaver: Electric sheep works on KDE too (a bit tricky to install though, but I can help with that); also, all of the “Really Slick” series work, and all the xscreensaver ones do as well (but they’re not installed by default)
- Themer: Look no further than the KDE settings
- System info: Something I also leave to the command-line, and not something you’ll need very often. Kinfocenter, or any Gnome app should do this.
- Menu editor: Right-click on the menu button.
- Config editor: KDE settings (system-settings). Unlike Gnome, KDE doesn’t try to hide anything from you, so you will not need anything like Ubuntu Tweak.
- Date/Time: There’s a plasmoid for that. There’s also one called “Fuzzy clock” which is actually really nice, and tells you the time in human-readable format (“Almost noon!”, “Quarter to five”, etc)
- Event sounds: All apps integrate with system-settings and you can set all the notification rules from there (should they display something on screen, should they play a sound, what sound, should they execute a command, should they be logged to some file, etc). Notifications include music switching, IM messages, battery notifications, package suggestions, etc etc.
- Font manager: KDE settings, or you can just right-click -> install a font file
- Hardware drivers: jockey-kde
- Login screen: KDM. One of its coolest features is that you can turn autologin on, but with your session initially locked, effectively giving you a preloaded session without having to type your password.
- Network apps: Knetworkmanager, or wicd, or any Gnome network manager
- Package manager: One of the things I also leave to the command line. You can use Synaptic or the KDE settings panel for packages if you want to, but a simple sudo apt-get is much faster anyway.
- Partition editor: Do you seriously need that? Use gparted once and never use it again
- Printing: KDE settings.
- Startup config: KDE settings.
As you can see, a lot of these things are all in the KDE settings. Funny to see Gnome users always fumbling around their System Menu to search for their preferences
7 July 2010 at 5:48 pm
why are you accusing me of lifting content from your site ? least ways its my reputation you are slandering
7 July 2010 at 5:12 pm
MPD client: Look under the Qt section on http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients
7 July 2010 at 5:18 pm
Thanks, QUASAR. WIll do.
8 July 2010 at 12:47 am
Did you get my comment? I’m just saying this because you replied to this comment but not mine, so maybe mine might have been spam-filtered out because it was too long or something.
8 July 2010 at 8:30 am
Sorry, things have been especially busy since I added KDE to my computer. There seem to be some conflicts with my current GNOME system and I’m trying to get things sorted out and set up. I didn’t mean to ignore you, I’m just not able to respond to each comment right away. Please be patient with me, because I have some tasks on today’s list that I can’t push to another day.
7 July 2010 at 6:54 pm
First, as you probably know already but I say it anyway: if you do decide to switch to KDE there is no need to ditch the other programs. They work fine as-is if you want
to. And gtk/gnome programs can be made to look pretty damn near indistinguishable from a KDE program. I have my desktop set up like that. KDE 4.4.4, and the only thing
that gives the gtk-programs away is usually the file-selector. Sure, you need some gtk and/or gnomelibs but personally (and your mileage may vary) I find it a small price to
pay in order to be able to choose more freely of which program for this or that category works the best for me. The footprint on disk and memory of those libs isn’t all that
huge on a decently modern computer.
That being said, I missed one distro in your spreadsheet. openSUSE. Granted, I’m biased since that’s my own personal favorite bar none but if you’re serious about
trying KDE out openSUSE is a must to at least try. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea (their way of dividing repos takes a while to get used to) but an excellent KDE implementation.
Finally, before the list of apps that is, regarding “There is one thing I’m wondering about using KDE. I know it’s possible to have both GNOME and KDE on a single computer, but
if I do that should I use different user profiles for each or will the settings info be safe as I bop back and forth between DE’s?”
The settings are safe (all KDE settings are saved in .kde or .kde4 usually, while the Gnome ones are saved elsewhere). The menues and context menues can be rather crowded if you have both of the complete DE’s installed though. Nothing that can’t be fixed but it’s a bit of a bother which is why I tend to stick to one DE on one machine, but cherry-picks
the apps. That is, I keep gwenview as my only installed image-viewer (or at least the only one still left in the menues) on all my computers no matter if the DE is KDE, Gnome,
or LXDE.
And onto the list:
Visual effects: Kwin. Compiz can be used but is not as well integrated into KDE as Kwin is. It’s sometimes faster though.
Window decorator: dekorator or Aurorae are good substitues for emerald. Not as many themes to choose from though. Emerald themes can be used in Smaragd (http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Smaragd+%28Emerald+for+KDE%29?content=125162), although without a GUI to install the themes yet.
Widgets: Google gadgets, plasmoids, and some MacOS X ones. All integrated into one place.
Dock: Fancy tasks is one popular one (http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Fancy+Tasks?content=99737)
Launcher+: krunner. And if you switch it the “Quicksand mode” it behaves pretty much like Gnome-do too.
Wallpaper changer: the built-in one should do the job.
Webbrowser: Try KDE’s rekonq. Consider it the KDE-version of Chrome/Chromium
E-mail: I couldn’t do without Kontact.
Office productivity: OpenOffice or Koffice, depending on how heavy a user of such programs you are. If you need to exchange files with Microsoft Office users, stick
with OpenOffice. It integrates decently into KDE now. Koffice is not as feature complete, but what it does have work well.
Text-editor: Kate or Kwrite.
Dictionary: There are several plasmoids available for that.
Screenshots: ksnapshot
Graphics editor: Gimp AND Krita if you ask me! And for a more fun-to-just-doodle-away: kolourpaint. More like MS-paint than anything else the last one.
Vector graphics: I use a combination of Inkscape, Karbon14 and oo.draw. They all have different strengths.
Image viewer: Gwenview or showphoto (usually shipped with Digikam) or kuickshow for a more light-weight one.
Color picker: either the plasmoid or kcolorchooser
File manager: Dolphin or konqueror. Or for a twin-panel one (a la midnight commander): krusader
Filemanager scripts: dolphin/konqueror service-menues. I don’t know how they compare to the ones in Nautilus since I don’t know how powerful the nautilus-scripts can be.
Coverflow: no idea what that is.
Filestorage: Dropbox. It’s not as well integrated into Dolphin as it is into nautilus, but does work. Nice service-menues are available.
Instant messaging: Depends. Kopete for an all-round solution, or if you only use MSN – Kmess.
Media player: Kaffeine or Bangarang. Or maybe VLC – strictly speaking a QT-app rather than a KDE-one but you would be hard pressed to notice.
Audio-player: Amarok or Juk
MPD-client: There’s a plasmoid for it, but don’t know how well it works.
Tag-editor: I prefer EasyTag myself, but KID3 and Amarok does it well too.
CD-ripper: Kaudiocreator, audex, or k3b. Or just use Dolphin.
Audioeditor: For smaller jobs, kwave. For bigger projects stick to Audacity.
Videoeditor: Kdenlive
Media-converter: I tend to stick to commandline here…but there are some nice service-menues otherwise.
Filecomparison: Kompare
Bittorrent: Ktorrent
Disc-burning: nothing beats K3B. On ANY platform.
Screen-saver: as long as it’s a standard x-screensaver, it should work.
Menu-editor: Kmenu, and then you can select between kickoff, classic menu, or lancelot in how the menu is displayed.
Themer: system-settings. KDE has two kind of themes: one that renders the buttons, windows, menues, and so on (the widget style). For a REALLY configure-all-you-want-and-then-some widget theme, use Qtcurve (which also makes it a lot easier to make gnome and kde programs to look the same since qt-curve also provides a theme-engine for gtk). And another that renders the taskbar and widgets. The last one is called a plasma-theme.
System-info: Kinfocenter
Config-editor: KDE-specific configs or things like run-levels? KDE-specifics are set in system-settings or a text-editor. Nothing else required. Ubuntu-tweaks only alter
values in gconf usually hidden if I’m not mistaken so there shouldn’t be a need for it or anything equivalent.
Date/time
Event sounds
Font-manager: all part of system-settings.
HW-drivers: Distro-specific usually. Jockey for Kubuntu and Yast for openSUSE for example.
Login-screen: KDM. Or just stick to Gnome’s GDM if you like.
Network apps: knetworkmanager most likely
Package-manager: I think kubuntu uses kpackagekit now, otherwise synaptic works (but that one does look like crap in KDE…) as well. Rather distro-specific otherwise.
Partitions: KDE partition manager. Doesn’t really matter which partition manager one uses really since they all use parted as a backend.
Printers: System-settings, or sometimes (depending on distro) their tools. openSUSE does it like that for example.
Startup-config: System-settings. Or: just leave it to the session-manager. By default it remembers what apps were running when you log out, and restores them when you
log back in.
7 July 2010 at 6:55 pm
kupfer should be a nice gnome-do replacement
7 July 2010 at 11:59 pm
Actually for KDE give Kanotix a try, its far better in terms of response, also sidux and SuSE.
8 July 2010 at 5:44 am
I use ubuntu netbook on – well – my netbook but as far as my “big” machine goes I use PCLinuxOS with it’s KDE flavour. One of the main reasons apart from Windows migrants is that it is quite gnome centric with nearly all the gnome dependencies already installed,
It appears to be very stable, up to date and with it;s Control Centre as well as KDE’s is easy to set up for any purpose. It has it’s downers, synaptic is now looking a little old compared with Ubuntu’s software center however as it comes (almost) fully loaded it is no more of a problem to set up after install than Ubuntu.
If you install I would load from Synaptic -> Tasks, the full KDE package and KDE add-ons as well as their Multimedia task which includes Win32 and libdvdcss.
In my opinion it is very polished, reliable and speedy.
PS. There is a dropbox application in Synaptic.
8 July 2010 at 7:16 am
looks like you have this one pretty well covered. kde is awesome (in my opinion) and you can run as my desktop environments / windows managers as you want (try that on *another* O/S).
i have been running kde for some time now, and any gnome apps i want i simply apt-get and they show up in the kde menu.
configuring settings will be the part that is most different but intuitive enough that you will spend little time figuring it out.
8 July 2010 at 8:25 am
Wow, WindPower covered a lot! Well said.
I wouldn’t recommend Kubuntu as it just isn’t developed with the same amount of attention that Ubuntu is. Also, I’ve never had a successful upgrade from one release to the next. Worth looking into I suppose, but if you check around, KDE lovers often are disappointed with Kubuntu.
Check out SimplyMepis 8.5 which is Debian Testing with KDE4 and some nice user-focused tweeks, or check out straight-up Debian Testing with the Debian Multimedia repository (Sid) added. Debian has a great default KDE without trying to hide some of the power of KDE, as Kubuntu tries to do.
Good luck and enjoy!
8 July 2010 at 8:31 am
Hi Nancy!
Good to see someone being so thorough in choice of distro.
Anyway WindPower pretty much nailed it regarding apps – in my opinion.
And about installing several DE’s on Linux – I think that is one of Linux’s charms
You can install Gnome, KDE, Fluxbox, XFCE and more if you like… and switch between them as easy as logout – login. Just choose the DE at login (for instance at KDM login you choose “session type”).
8 July 2010 at 2:41 pm
Hi, Jonah! This is actually a post from my brother Peng but thanks for the response. He and I have been talking about looking at KDE on our computers for the last week or so but I’m going to let him be the guinea pig.
Actually I’m going to let him get his computer set up and when I see what he’s done I may ask him to help me get my computer running KDE. We agreed that with as many tech support questions I can ask him it would be better to let him see what’s what before I start throwing the “What is that?” and “How do I do that on my computer?” lol I can be that helpless some times.
8 July 2010 at 11:48 am
you may give a try for mepis linux- an excellent kde based distro.