I tend to pick a Distro not for the WM, but for the support and application repository and how they deliver. Ubuntu is pretty up there. as is Arch (I think arch has an absolutely insane support community (Good enough that they have solutions for things that I have been able to apply to distros other than arch), but ubuntu is more widely supported.

KDE is pretty Good. Gnome is pretty and still somewhat useable. but both have a pretty significant overhead now. LXDE is pretty much the useable but lightweight king with XFCE a very close second. Think fo Gnome or KDE as much more than just a window manager, but a suite of tools and utilities. and see which ones you want to use. LXQt is now on my list fo things to experiment with.

VLC is my preferred media player across the core 3 platforms (Windows, OSX, and Linux)

Geary is a pretty solid email client and I like it better than evolution which is pretty dang good, but I access my email from so many places Gmail in the browser is my default anymore.

For my default browser, I use Vivaldi (chromium project). This is across pretty much all platforms Win, SOX, Android, and Linux.

And I tend to use Filezilla Pro for not just FTP, but for SCP as well as a number of other protocols. (I liked Filezilla free so much this is where I went).

On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM Steve Litt via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss said on Sun, 23 Oct 2022 11:04:51 -0700

>
>My first question has to do with what desktop KDE or GNOME?

Neither. They're both slow, entangled pigs. Gnome has a weird,
inobvious user interface. If you want something performant, simple and
clean, LXDE is the way to go. Or if your distro doesn't offer LXDE,
LXQt is almost as good.

By the way, except for Redhat which likes to keep their monopoly close
to the vest, you can use any wm/de (Window Manager/Desktop Environment)
on any distro.

>
>I want to use Ubuntu. Ubuntu desktop used GNOME. Kubuntu uses KDE
>and has the Plasma desktop. Not sure what the Plasma desktop is. I
>will look into that once I have sent this email.

The computer you describe has paltry resources, by today's standards.
Ubuntu will consume a lot of those resources. Also, if you sign up with
Ubuntu, you sign up with the incredibly entangled and complexified
systemd. Just saying.

>
>I eventually would like to edit videos on Linux. According to what I
>hear and read, Kdenlive is said to be the best free Linux editor.
>
>I need to do a handful of things with this Linux box. Mail,

All email clients suck. Claws-Mail, Evolution and Mutt suck the least.

> Internet
>surfing,

All distros I'm aware of come with lots of great browsers. Get to know
them, and which ones work best in which situations.

> virtualization using oracle VirtualBox,

Or qemu or others.

> programming using
>Visual Studio Code,

I use VSCode every day to do websites. It's fantastic.

> and video editing using Kdenlive. I hope I did
>not leave anything out.
>
>List of initial questions:
>
>1) Is it GNOME or KDE?

Neither

>2) What mail client should I use? I have been using Thunderbird for
>years and am not married to it.

Thunderbird's fine if you don't have a lot of emails stored. When you
have lots of stored emails in your various mailboxes, Thunderbird can
actually come to a standstill. I've had it happen. Claws-Mail,
Evolution and Mutt are much more performant.

>3) For FTP I have been using FileZilla.

For file transfer I use sftp. For whole directory trees I use rsync, or
tar=>gzip the tree, transfer it with sftp, and then ssh to the
destination and untar it.

>4) For watching DVD videos I have been using VCL media player - any
>thoughts?

Different media players work in different situations. Whatever distro
you pick will probably have lots of choices. VLC, Totem, SMPlayer are
just a few of your many choices. I use them all.

>5) For SSH I have been using the Win 10, I think it called the Linux
>subsystem. This new box will have command line access so that should
>not be an issue.
>6) I will be using a wired non-routable static IP.

Here's my simple, distro independent script for obtaining a fixed IP4
address. Just have your rc.local script run it.
http://troubleshooters.com/linux/qemu/nobs.htm#tldrstep

And here's my complete script for hosts of qemu guests:
http://troubleshooters.com/linux/qemu/nobs.htm#hostnetworking

>7) Eventually I will need to configure my printer/scanner. From a
>quick search it looks like KDE makes it simple compared to the old
>days...

Before you select the massively entangled KDE, read this:
http://troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm

The preceding article is specifically about Kmail, but KDE does the same
krap to all its apps.

>
>I apologize in advance for all my future questions. I'm sure I will
>drive you crazy over the next few months while I try to understand and
>learn.

Welcome to the world of desktop Linux!

SteveT

Steve Litt
Summer 2022 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookstore/thrive.htm
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