There are a lot of things you can do with computers. You can probably think
of some that I wouldn't. But here's a list of the programs I use, to do the
stuff I do. It might help as some guide for you. Or not, your call.
E-mail:
Unlike windows or the Macintosh operating systems. The unix based world
doesn't rely on tools that try to do everything. Like outlook, Instead the
focus is usually on small applications that do one task very well. Mutt
handles reading and writing mail very well. It uses other programs to receive
and send mail.
Email is broken up into two basic programs. MTAs (mail transport agent. The
program that sends and receives mail) and MUAs (mail user agent, what you use
to read your mail)
I use
Mutt to read my mail. Mutt is just about
infinitely configurable, can be made to do just about anything there is to be
done with mail. If you come from the eudora and outlook crowd, you might think
that it looks a little old fashioned. It doesn't have a pretty mouse based
interface, it doesn't have cute icons to click when you want to get your mail.
If you try and run mutt without reading at least the quick start guide, then
you will almost certainly not get the results you hope for. However, a modest
amount of effort, and mutt becomes a tool which makes dealing with a hundred
emails a day easier. Mutt allows me to collect all my mail in one account, and
when I reply to or send mail, it will configure my signature file according to
the address I am sending to. I like mutt, it works well for me.
For an MTA, I used to use
Sendmail.
I no longer use Sendmail. There are several reasons, but
mostly, it's awkward to configure, has a poor security record, and is
plain clunky and not particularly "elegant" to me. So I now use
Exim for my MTA
In addition to my MUA (
mutt) and my MTA (
Exim). I use a program called
procmail to filter my mail, to act as my spam
filter. It also allows me to collect the mail from various accounts around the
web into one account, and reply through that account, but have the replies
appear to come from the various accounts I have established. It does this with
the assistance of
fetchmail which as you might
expect, fetches the mail.
If you are used to Eudora, or Outlook, you might think that using four
programs to do the same job as they do is a bit odd. But neither eudora nor
outlook perform any of the functions as well as the individual programs do.
Also, if I decide that I would rather use
Evolution to read my mail, then I can do so. I simply
replace mutt with evolution. I don't even have to replace mutt, I can try
another mail client without worrying that my mail will get lost in the
transition. Linux gives you flexibility to do it whatever way you want.
Sometimes it means that you have to search out the information you need. But
that's worth it to me.
Lest you think that the linux way is too complicated, there are mail
programs whose function is similar to the windows and mac world. Programs
linke
Evolution,
XFmail,
Kmail,
TkRat,
Thunderbird and others.
News:
Usenet newsgroups have been with us for about 20 years, and despite the
proliferation of the web, and of various other fora, are still a major source
of information on subjects wide and diverse. Like e-mail, news is broken up
into functions, but for most people, all you need is the newsreader. For most
of you, your ISP will provide access to a newsserver.
I use
SLRN, another text based client like mutt.
Again, slrn lacks the eye candy of programs like FreeAgent or newswatcher. But
like mutt, the primitive looking interface is a lot more powerful than
appearances would dictate. SLRN has the ability to filter news based on just
about any criteria. far beyond what FreeAgent or the Outlook newsreader can
accomplish. But if you prefer the GUI way of dealing with text based subjects
like news. You have many choices. Among them are the
Thunderbird
newsreader, also
Pan ,
Knode and
others.
If you wish to set up your own newserver, you can easily enough using
leaf-node or INN, but these are subjects that require a little more info than
I want to go into here. Suffice it to say, that if you don't know what INN is,
you probably don't need to set it up.
Web browsing:
You might think that web browsing under linux would be a little restricted,
after all, there is no Linux version of IE. In fact, there are a wealth of
browsers out there, from text mode ones like
Lynx,
Links, and
W3m.
To fully featured browsers like
Netscape,
Konqueror,
Nautilus and
Firefox. There are more, like
Opera, which is the same as the windows
version, and
Galeon which uses the
rendering engine from Mozilla. Should be enough to get you started. :)
Graphics:
There are several interesting graphics programs out there. But the first
one to look at is certainly
Gimp, the GNU image
manipulation program. A little bit of photoshop, a dash of fractal painter,
and a there you have it. I don't do much in the way of graphics work, but
there are a host of image manipulation programs out there that allow you to
twist, warp, spin, spiral and otherwise mutiliate just about any kind of
graphical file. See
imagemagic
for more things to do with pictures than you thought likely.
Games:
Rather than just give you pointers to the games I play, I'll just point you
to the
Linux games page which has links to
more games than you will be able to go through, anyway, all work and no
play makes for a boring life. So have fun.
This should suffice for the moment. This isn't meant as a newbie's howto on
using linux, there are many pages out there that do that very well. But I hope
I have whetted your appetite for linux. If so, have fun, if not, have fun
anyway!
Last modified on
Sun Aug 21 21:27:13 PDT 2005