Linux Desktop Environment
Common wisdom says that Linux lacks applications fortunately, the common wisdom is dead wrong on this, especially when it comes to productivity applications. Finding the applications, though, can be a challenge — so I've put together a list of 10 great, and free, productivity apps for the Linux desktop.
Linux creates a friendly environment for choices and options. For example, there are many Linux-based distributions out there that use different desktop environments for you to choose from. I have picked some of the best desktop environments that you will see in the Linux world.
Plasma
I consider KDE’s Plasma desktop to be the most advanced desktop environment (DE). It’s the most feature-rich and customizable desktop environment that I have ever seen; even Mac OS X and Windows don’t come near Plasma when it comes to complete control by the user.
I also love Plasma because of its awesome file manager, Dolphin. One reason I prefer Plasma over Gnome-based systems is the file manager. One of my biggest gripes with Gnome is that its file manager, Files, can’t handle basic tasks, such as batch-files renaming. That’s important for me because I take a lot of pictures, and Gnome makes it impossible for me to rename image files. On Dolphin, it’s a walk in the park.
Then, you can add more functionality to Plasma with plugins. Plasma comes with some incredible software including Krita, Kdenlive, Calligra Office Suite, digiKam, Kwrite, and many other applications being developed by the KDE community.
The only weakness of the Plasma desktop is its default email client, Kmail. It’s way too complicated to set up, and I also wish that setting up Kmail also configured the Address Book and Calendar.
Plasma is the default desktop environment of many major distributions including openSUSE.
GNOME
GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) was founded by Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena in 1997 because KDE used Qt toolkit, which was released under a proprietary license. Unlike KDE, where there were numerous customizations, GNOME focused on keeping things simple. GNOME became extremely popular due to its simplicity and ease of use. A factor that I think contributed heavily to Gnome’s popularity was the fact that Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions, picked it as their default desktop environment.
With changing times, GNOME needed a change. Therefore, with GNOME 3 the developers introduced the GNOME 3 Shell, which brought with it an entirely new design paradigm. That in turn led to some conflict with Canonical’s plans with Ubuntu, and they created their own shell for GNOME called Unity. Initially, GNOME 3 Shell was plagued by many issues -- most notably, the fact that extensions would stop working after updates. This major shift in design and the various problems then led to many forks of GNOME, such as the Cinnamon and Mate desktops.
That said, what makes GNOME desktop interesting is that they are targeting touch-based devices, so if you have new laptops that come with a touchscreen, Gnome is the best suited DE for them.
With version 3.18, GNOME has made some impressive improvements. The most interesting thing that they have done is Google Drive integration where users can mount their Google Drive as a remote file storage and work with files without having to use a web browser. I also love GNOME’s awesome integration of email client with calendar and address book. Despite all this awesomeness, however, the one thing that keeps me from using GNOME is its file manager, which can’t handle batch file renames. I will stick to Plasma until GNOME developers fix this problem.
Unity
Unity is technically not a desktop environment, it’s a graphical shell developed by Canonical for Ubuntu. Unity runs on top of GNOME desktop environment and uses most stock GNOME apps and tools. The Ubuntu team has forked a few GNOME components to better suit the needs of Unity users.
Unity plays a very important role in Ubuntu’s convergence story and with Unity 8, the company is bringing the desktop and mobile world together. Canonical has developed many intriguing technologies for Unity including HUD (Head-up Display). They also took a unique approach with lenses and scopes making it easy for users to find appropriate content.
The upcoming release of Ubuntu, 16.04, is expected to ship with Unity 8 so users will get to experience all the work that developers have put into this open source software. One of the biggest criticisms with Unity was opt-out integration of Amazon ads and other services. With the upcoming release, though, Canonical is removing Amazon ads from Dash, making it a privacy-respecting OS by default.
Cinnamon
Cinnamon was initially developed by Linux Mint -- the most popular distro on DistroWatch. Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME Shell, just like Unity. Later, however, it evolved into a desktop environment as Linux Mint developers forked many components of the GNOME desktop, including Files, to address the needs of their users.
Because Linux Mint was based on regular releases of Ubuntu, the developers continued to chase the moving target that was Ubuntu. As a result, despite great promises Cinnamon was full of bugs and problems. With the 17.x release, however, Linux Mint developers moved to LTS edition of Ubuntu that allowed them to focus on core components of Cinnamon without having to worry about the base. As a result of this move, Cinnamon has become incredibly stable and bug free. The developers have started adding more features to the desktop.
For those who prefer the good old Windows-like UI on top of the simplicity of GNOME, Cinnamon is the best desktop environment.
MATE Desktop
The MATE desktop environment is also a fork of GNOME. However, unlike Cinnamon, it’s not a fork of GNOME 3; instead it’s a fork of GNOME 2 codebase, which is not unmaintained. A few developers didn’t like Gnome 3 and wanted to “continue” GNOME 2, so they took the codebase and created MATE. The MATE project forked many components of the GNOME project and created a few from scratch. To avoid any conflict with GNOME 3, they renamed all their packages: Nautilus become Caja, Gedit became Pluma, Evince became Atril, and so on.
Although MATE is a continuation of GNOME 2, that doesn’t mean they are using old and obsolete technologies; they are using newer technologies to offer a modern GNOME 2 experience.
What makes MATE an impressive desktop environment is that it’s extremely resource efficient. You can run it on older hardware or newer less powerful hardware, such as Raspberry Pi or Chromebook Flip. What’s makes it even more interesting is that using it on powerful systems frees most system resources for applications instead of the resources being consumed by the desktop environment itself.
LXQt
LXQt is the successor of LXDE, one of the most lightweight desktop environments. It’s a merger of two open source projects LXDE and Razor-Qt. The first usable version of LXQt (v 0.9) was released in 2015. Initially, the developers used Qt4 but then all compatibility with it was dropped, and they moved to Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5 for speedy development. I have tried LXQt on my Arch systems, and its a great lightweight desktop environment, but it has a long way to go before it becomes the rightful successor of LXDE.
Xfce
Xfce predates the KDE desktop environment. It is one of the oldest and lightest desktop environments around. The latest release of Xfce is 4.15, which was released in 2015 and uses modern technologies like GTK+ 3. Xfce is used by many special purpose distributions, such as Ubuntu Studio, because -- much like MATE -- it frees most system resources for applications. It’s also the default desktop environment of many notable Linux distributions including Manjaro Linux, PC/OS, Salix, and Mythbuntu.
Budgie
Budgie is a new desktop environment being developed by the Solus Linux team. Solus is new Linux distribution that’s being developed from scratch, and Budgie is a core component of it. Budgie uses many GNOME components and offers a minimalistic UI. Because there’s not much information about the new desktop, I talked to the core developer of Solus, Ikey Doherty, and he explained, “We ship our own desktop, the Budgie Desktop. Unlike some other desktops, this is not a fork, rather it aims for full integration into the GNOME stack. It's written from scratch, and is specifically designed to cater for the experience Solus is offering. We work with upstream GNOME here as much as we can, contributing fixes, and advocate and support their work.”
Pantheon
Pantheon needs no introduction, it’s the desktop environment powering the lovely Linux distribution elementary OS. Similar to Budgie, Pantheon is not a fork of GNOME as many may assume. elementary OS team comes from design background so they pay very close attention to minute details, as a result Pantheon is extremely polished desktop environment. At the moment, it may lack many feature found in DEs like Plasma, but the developers are taking their time in order to stick to the design principle.
Conclusion
As I went through this story, I realized the awesomeness of open source and Linux. There is something for everyone. As Jon “maddog” Hall said during the latest SCaLE 14, “Yes, there are 300 Linux distributions. I can try them and stick to the one that I like!”
So, enjoy this diversity and use the one that floats your boat!
Productivity Softwares
Common wisdom says that Linux lacks applications fortunately, the common wisdom is dead wrong on this, especially when it comes to productivity applications. Finding the applications, though, can be a challenge — so I've put together a list of 10 great, and free, productivity apps for the Linux desktop.
Now, when I refer to "productivity tools," I'm talking about tools that go with time management, calendaring, note-taking, task-management and office tools. If you haven't been on Linux very long, you might not realize what a wide selection and variety of tools you have to choose from. This is by no means a fully exhaustive list, but a selection of tools for the Linux desktop that I've found useful over the years.
LibreOffice
We have to start with the most obvious, simply because LibreOffice is the de facto standard office suite for Linux. Most likely, your distribution comes pre-installed with this open source suite of tools that includes a word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, formula generator, database, and a drawing tool.
Little can be said of LibreOffice that hasn’t already been said; but if you’re looking at implementing Linux in the office, your best choices on this level fall to either LibreOffice or Google Docs. For those that prefer local apps, you’re left with LibreOffice...and that’s not such a bad thing. In fact, LibreOffice outshines MS Office in a number of ways. Above all else, LibreOffice follows standards far better than MS Office. LibreOffice is also free to use, so anyone on a budget won’t have to dig deep into their pockets for a subscription to Office365. LibreOffice has an outstanding extension system and a wonderful centralized interface Start Center ,where you can open previously saved documents or start something new.
Google Keep
There are plenty of note-taking apps available for Linux. But, if you’re looking for a note-taking app that makes syncing to the cloud (so you can use your notes anywhere), you’d be hard-pressed to find a better tool than Google Keep. I know what you’re saying, “Google Keep is just a web page and not a Linux app.” To that, I would say you are only partially correct. If you happen to use Chrome on Linux, you can install the Google Keep extension and then open Keep in its own app window .
Google Keep allows you to take notes, create bulleted lists, share notes, add images, extract text from images, and much more.
Evolution
If you’re looking for a Personal Information Manager (PIM), and you’ve migrated from MS Outlook, you’ll want to give Evolution a look. Evolution has come a long, long way and when paired with the likes of Ubuntu GNOME, it makes for an amazing productivity tool. And, with an ease of integration into the likes of Google apps (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks), you won’t find a more productive PIM within the Linux landscape. When using Evolution with the latest iteration of GNOME, all you have to do is add your Google account to the On-Line Accounts section of Settings, and Evolution will automatically start syncing upon first run.
For a very long time, Evolution was frowned upon for being buggy. The latest releases are quite stable and do an outstanding job of working with Google and Exchange 2007/2010.
GIMP
Another obvious choice for productivity happens to be the flagship image editor for the Linux platform. GIMP is a powerhouse image editing tool that will serve anyone (regardless of platform) needing to add this functionality to their productivity. GIMP can handle anything you throw at it...and more. If you’re looking for the Photoshop for Linux...this is it.
One of the wonderful things about GIMP is that the developers listen. For the longest time, the GIMP interface was a problem for many users. To change that, the developers created Single Window Mode . Even many of us long-time users decided it was a more efficient means of working with images.
GNOME Files
This one is tricky. Why? Because everyone uses a file manager and everyone’s idea of a good file manager varies, depending upon their needs. Even though I am an Elementary OS Freya user, I find the default file manager for GNOME to be superior...even if for only two features. Nautilus includes entries for Move to and Copy to in the context menus (Figure 5). This makes moving or copying files to a new location incredibly easy.
The second feature that helps GNOME Files rise above the rest is the ease of file/folder sharing. Getting some file managers to work with Samba requires significant work. GNOME Files works out of the box with Samba, so your network file sharing is simple.
Yes, there are tons of outstanding file managers for Linux, but if you’re looking for the one that will help boost your productivity, without requiring you to learn an entirely new interface or jump through hoops, GNOME Files might be the one.
Tweak Tools
By default, Ubuntu doesn’t provide a lot of flexibility when it comes to customizing your desktop experience. You can do things like change your wallpaper, use different fonts for your system, and install different window themes, but not much more than that.
If you want nitty-gritty access to some of the more advanced settings hidden beneath the hood of your system, you’ll want to install a tweak tool. The one you choose will depend on your desktop environment.
For Unity desktops: You should install Unity Tweak Tool, which is available in the Software Center. This will let you change the behavior of windows and settings beyond what Unity normally allows.
For Gnome desktops: You should install Gnome Tweak Tool, which can also be found in the Software Center. Advanced tweaks include custom keyboard shortcuts, altered window behaviors, and fine-grain theme controls.
For Compiz desktops: Compiz isn’t a desktop environment per se, but rather a window manager that allows for 3D effects and animations. If you decide to use Compiz for window management, you should install Compiz Config Settings Manager from the Software Center.
Compiz is far more advanced than the other tweak tools above, which means it might be overwhelming at first. Be careful not to change things unless you know what they are, otherwise you may break something.
Synaptic Package Manager
Except for the tweak tools above, I’m convinced that there’s no tool more important for Ubuntu users than Synaptic Package Manager. Sure, the built-in Ubuntu Software Center is good enough to get the job done, but it has a few quirks and missing features.On the other hand, Synaptic is objectively better. For starters, it isn’t as laggy when browsing through packages, and it’s way faster at returning search results. It can repair broken package dependencies, perform smart system upgrades, and has a friendlier interface.
Plus, it has a setting for automatically deleting packages after installation, which helps alleviate unnecessary disk space usage. Ubuntu Software Center doesn’t have this feature.
Sublime Text
One of the worst Linux myths is that only programmers should care about Linux. This myth does a disservice to the operating system because there’s a lot to like about Linux even if you’ve never seen or written a line of code in your life.That being said, it’s undeniable that Linux is great for programmers, and if you’re going to be doing any kind of programming or scripting at all, then you should really consider installing Sublime Text. It’s the best text editor out there and almost as good as an IDE.
How to install: Sublime Text is not available in the Software Center. To install, open the Terminal and type in the following three commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-3sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install sublime-text-installer
Steam
Linux is becoming a serious platform for gaming. It hasn’t gotten there yet, but it’s well on its way, and there’s a lot of evidence to show that Linux may catch up to Windows in just a few more years. One of the biggest milestones? The release of Steam for Linux.Steam is one of the best ways to download games on Linux. The library of games is expansive, the community is massive, and the games themselves are pretty darn good. Not all of the games on Steam can be played just yet, but the number that can be played is growing day by day, and Steam itself is always improving too.
For now, you’ll have to deal with the fact that many games — such as these free MMORPGs that are native to Linux — will have to be played outside of Steam.
Bluefish
If you need a programming and Web content editor that’s really sophisticated but lightweight and flexible, you have to check out Bluefish. What I really like about Bluefish is it loads fast, supports projects (groups of files), has auto-completion and auto-tag closing, understands many programming languages, and includes site upload and download ability. And that’s just scratching the surface of what Bluefish can do.
Wine
Linux has some awesome apps, but sometimes the big guys ignore Linux and we’re left out in the cold. Wine is (sometimes) the answer: if you’ve got a Windows program you can’t leave behind (whether it’s Outlook for work, Photoshop for images, or World of Warcraft for fun), Wine will run it on your Linux desktop. It doesn’t work with every program out there, but Wine’s app database will help you figure out which ones work well, so you can get one step closer to leaving Windows behind forever.
