Hello,

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As for, me: Libre Office, FileZilla, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp, Inkscape, Visual Studio Code, etc...

I'm on Debian/Mate

>As for, me: Libre Office, FileZilla, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp, Inkscape, Visual Studio Code, etc...

Libre Office, Thunderbird, Firefox, Gimp, Sublime Text for me

Some other things I installed, Kazam for video/audio recording, VLC player for videos, Skype for people I occasionally am in touch with.

If you have a GPU make sure you get those drivers installed.

There's never been a time where I needed some app functionality that wasn't on Linux.

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 2:40 pm (utc) on Dec 3, 2020]

Thanks for that JorgeV

What about antivirus software? Problems are most likely to come in via e-mail and I really don't want any nasties getting to hide on the system.

Which distro and which desktop have you gone for?

Antivirus is not necessary.

I agree with most of JorgeV's list
Libre Office is essential, usually installed by default.
I use multiple browsers - I have six installed, although I only really use 3 regularly. Firefox is my favourite. Chromium over Chrome for me.
Krita has some advantages over Gimp. From what I know from more artistic people Gimp is better for photo retouching, Krita for creating drawings.
Inkspace definitely.
Thunderbird is my favourite email client.
Zim for notes.
Terminator


I do not use a separate FTP app because most Linux file managers can handle FTP, SFTP and other protocols fine. The best at this is Dolphin, but I have not used Dolphin much outside KDE. Then again, one of the reasons I use KDE is because Dolphin is so good and it integrates well into KDE (because it is a KDE app). Almost all applications can treat remote files just like local ones (so, for example, your text editor can directly edit and open a remote file)

For development there are a lot of personal preferences involved.

I use Eric6 for Python, Spyder for numerical Python stuff, Komodo Edit for HTML and JS (Komodo IDE is now freeware, but not open source as Komodo Edit is,, I mean to try it and want to check whether it phones home or relies on their services), Kate for general text editing, git-cola. geany (but less so recently).

DBeaver because its easy to use one tool for multiple RDBMSs, and I do not like PGAdmin 4 (PGAdmin 3 was great).

Konqueror, is a great tool, but I mostly use it as a man page reader.

Non work stuff:
Quod Libet (music player)
VLC (for video)
Pidgin
Battle for Wesnoth
Calibre (ebooks)

All except DBeaver and Komodo Edit will be in the repos of all the big distros AFAIK.

Easy to install, cost nothing, so try them all!

To expand on the need for Linux anti-virus, most Linux antivirus software has the aim of preventing you passing viruses on to Linux users. It can be a very good thing to have on a lInux mail server, for example. on a desktop, not so much.

its not immune, so exercise reasonable care and common sense, but unless you do silly things the risk is minimal

There are also tools for hardening Linux - e.g. through sandboxing. Probably a better approach as it will be very secure, but can be a pain to configure.

I would definitely configure a firewall. There are number of GUIs, you might find one preinstalled. If not, I used to use GUFW.

Thank you, and all interesting suggestions.

Which distro and which desktop have you gone for?

I was struggling with the range of choice, and a friend suggested for a first foray to choose kubuntu. Years ago I tried Mint but it was very flaky on the machine.
I may have made the wrong choice with kubuntu, but it's done for now.

I now need to start adding and configuring each software package one-by-one.

I asked about a/v because so much malware is sent via email. I don't visit dodgy sites, but I have come across malware payloads a few times, but less so nowadays. It was often via ads. It's email I'm most concerned about.

Kubuntu came with a number of common packages, such as FF. I've yet to dig.

Tips and ideas are always welcomed by a newbie, thanks.

My recent adventures in updating Win Users to Linux Users has been Mint based and so far so good. The standard packages named above are what I install, though no a/v has been. I, also, urge just commonsense. Then again, the web itself is beginning to address the malevolent side by using a/v at their server levels, ESPECIALLY email facing, and that has begun to make a difference (though I do not always agree with their choices of what to block!).

Welcome to the adventure!

:)

Meant to add I'm using ubuntu with KDE bolted on. And the packages (sans the chromium or google stuff) described above. Gimp works, but simply is not as rich as Photoshop... so still running Win for some things.

If you are using Kubuntu you will have Dolphin installed. It is very good at handling remote file systems and I find I have no need for separate ftp/sftp/ftps software. If you do not already, now would be a good time to switch to using ssh keys. I use ssh-agent so I can passphrase protect a key and still unlock it only once per session. A bit of set up but a time saver in the long run.

KDE, so where KDE software is good try it.: Digikam, Krita, Kate, Falkon, Konqueror, Akregator, Kmail, KDE Connect (if you use Android devices), Okular (should be the default) are all excellent apps (not all what I use, but that is down to preferring something else) and there are more: [apps.kde.org...]

I have not found Calligra (the KDE office suite) to be much good, but installing it does let you preview office documents in Konqueror (tabbed, paned, file manager and browser) and you may need it isntalled to see office document thumbnails in Dolphin.

You might have stability issues with nvidia cards. I found changing the compositor rendering backend to XRender fixed it. Probably worse performance, but not noticeable with desktop effects. On that subject, KDEs effects, especially the desktop cube, are great fun.

you want LibreOffice for sure.

i usually use FF for a web browser but sometimes i'll use Chromium or others - there are plenty of choices if you have a favorite.

you'll need your usual Zoom/Skype/type apps.

i run Xenu LinkSleuth under WINE when necessary but SEO Screaming Frog also has a linux version.

Do I need an antivirus package? What email clients to use, or is it now all cloud-based, such as gmail. What about ftp? etc.

no AV necessary (so far)

i've been using Thunderbird since pre-linux days but with IMAP i still don't see much use for a web browser as email client except for dire circumstances.

as far as ftp is concerned, keep in mind that for many tasks the standard "command line unix" version can be quite useful when combined with other command line tools (ls, grep, sort, etc, and the pipe operator)