Linux® Bible 2011 Edition: Boot up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 13 Other Distributions

Chapter 2. Creating the Perfect Desktop

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Getting a computer for Linux

• Installing a Linux desktop system

• Configuring the desktop

• Adding desktop applications

• Transitioning from Windows

Before you abandon your Windows or Mac desktop for Linux as your primary desktop system, you want to make sure that your Linux setup can do everything you want it to do. That means being able to

• Run the applications you need to do your work, play your multimedia, and communicate over the Internet

• Transition the way you work and the stuff you work with (documents, music, spreadsheets, and so on) from your old desktop to your new Linux desktop

Getting the perfect Linux desktop system won't happen by itself. But using a basic Linux installation, a connection to the Internet, and the descriptions in this book, you should be able to match what you had on your Windows or Mac system in most ways and surpass it in many others.

In this chapter, I'm going to take you through the paces of setting up a Linux desktop system that will make the transition to Linux as easy as possible. To that end, I'll start you with a particular Linux distribution, describe what you want to add to it to make it a smoking desktop system, and suggest ways of tuning it to work best for you.

The software in this section draws on a variety of sources, including "The Perfect Desktop" how-to documents available from HowtoForge.com. Although this chapter focuses on Fedora, other documents at that site cover "Perfect Desktops" for Ubuntu, ...