On Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:45:52 -0800 Russell D Brunelle <rdb...@uw.edu> wrote:
> Here's the draft I have so far, which builds on something I mentioned > on this list a while ago: http://russellb.livejournal.com/1335718.html I'm sure everyone has different preferences, but here are some of my preferences. Firstly, the version of Linux is not all that important. I've had good experiences with Ubuntu in the past, but thanks to some idiotic (in my opinion) decisions recently by the maintainers of both Gnome and KDE and by Ubuntu for its default desktop, I've given up on Ubuntu, Gnome, and KDE, all three of which I have used happily in the past. For the average user now I would recommend Linux Mint (which just works even more smoothly than Ubuntu) and, for those willing to learn a little or a lot about what is behind the pretty windows, either Sabayon or Gentoo. Whichever distro you choose, change the window manager to XFCE or LXDE. For attractive graphics, I would generally agree. You have left out two tools I find very versatile and useful: for easy publication-quality data plotting I think xmgrace (which has a graphical interface, but can also be used on the command line and in scripts) is easier to use than gnuplot; and if maps of any kind are needed, you need GMT (Generic Mapping Tools). If you are using "PDF for everything else" you definitely need pdfimages (part of the Poppler library) and pdftk. And for things like the title pages Steve Litt says you need to do with something other than LyX, you need Scribus. Finally, if you want to make your document into an ebook, you need Calibre. Les
