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Posted: 28th of March 06, 1:16 PM
I, like many other geeks, use linux as my main desktop at home. I do this because I can have easy internet browsing, email etc without all the inherent problems of using Windows. I don't need to search for shareware (and subsequenlty illegitimate cracks) to achieve a simple task (rip/re-encode music, author DVDs, edit graphics, decompress archives, etc) as there are already a wide array of open source utilities to achieve the same thing.
On my desktop, I use GNOME, which provides a very simplistic desktop environment. I use GNOME on the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
More recent developments in the linux world have brought us some very cool applications. For those that want an iTunes-like application, there is Banshee which offers a very simple way to manage your music (both locally stored files, remote audio streams and music on your iPod!). This brings the functionality of my Gnome desktop to be on a par with an XP equivalent.
There are also applications that surpass what is available in the closed source world. My two favourite examples are Beagle (a tool to "ransack your personal information space") and NetworkManager which essentially manages your network connectivity.
Beagle is basically a complete desktop search tool that indexes all of your files and lets you search them based on file name, content (yes every single word, including formatting, in a document is indexed along with ID3 tags of music, EXIF information of images etc). MacOSX offers something along the same lines in Spotlight. Windows XP, on the other hand, offers nothing "built in" and requires something like Google Desktop Search to provide similar functionality.
NetworkManager is one of those pieces of software that once you've used it, you can't imagine living without it. I will go as far as to say it makes the wireless networking experience on Linux better than any other OS. Compared to the atrocity that is XP wireless support, even with the "improvements" made in SP2, Network Manager is like a Christmas gift you can't put down.
The linux desktop also offers eye candy over and above what is currently available on Windows PCs. Windows Vista will require a pretty decent graphics card to do fancy things to application windows etc on the desktop. XGL, amongst other changes to the graphics server used on Linux, can provide accelerated windows now on pretty basic hardware, all using OpenGL. This also means things like Apple's Dashboard and Vista's Gadgets and eye candy are all possible on a linux desktop.
If you have any questions about using Linux as your desktop, specifically Gnome, then feel free to email me and I'll see if I can offer any words of wisdom and answer queries.