Here’s another step in my “perfect” Garuda Linux installation. Just installing the OS is one thing, but I have to get all my programs installed and the settings the way I like them.
In this post, I explore the different media programs that I like to use. This includes everything from drawing programs to sound and video programs.
Visual Media
Inkscape is the first program that I use a lot. It is great for drawing and produces vector files. It natively saves and opens svg files. I installed it with the Setup Assistant.
Gimp is the next important program because it is great for pictures, photos, and anything with many colors. Again, I simply installed it through the Setup Assistant. There were a few extra plugin packages as well that I saw in Octopi, but I didn’t install any of them:
- gimp-elsamuko-git: installs a bunch of scripts; you can see previews on their webpage. I skipped this one for now
- gimp-extras: contains a bunch of brushes and patterns; interestingly, the URL points to an Ubuntu package; again I skipped this one because I haven’t used them much
- gimp-nufraw: for RAW files; skipped because I don’t use RAW files
- gimp-plugin-gmic: something for the gmic framework; haven’t used
- gimp-plugin-normalmap: for tangent-space normal maps; again haven’t used
One of the challenges I found was that there wasn’t a good simple app to open images for preview. Gimp is a bit much if you just want to see what an image looks like. Gwenview was the missing KDE app that didn’t come packaged in. I installed the “gwenview” package from Octopi. (I did not install the optional packages with it.)
The Microsoft Fonts don’t fit that well in here, but I do use various fonts when creating Media. If I want to share it with friends, I might want to use a font they have on their Windows machine. I just installed the ttf-ms-fonts package with Octopi. Now, I can go into Inkscape or Gimp and insert a textbox using Arial or Courier New.
Audio Media
Audacity is an important program for working with Sound. It’s like the Gimp of the sound world. I can crop segments of sound, remove noise, or even change the pitch of songs. It will even handle recording multiple tracks. I installed it from the Setup Wizard.
Sound Converter is another handy tool, but I don’t really use it that much. It can convert, for example, an ogg file to an mp3 file. It can easily convert an mp4 video to an mp3 sound file, too. I don’t have too much of that anymore, but I still installed it with the Setup Wizard.
Musescore is a great tool for sheet music. It allows putting music on scores. Again, I installed it from the Setup Wizard.
Easytag is the last one that I went ahead and installed from the Setup Wizard. I haven’t used it recently, but it was nice for editing the meta-data for mp3 files. This was handy for putting music on a USB for the car and making sure the car would show the proper titles and such.
Video Media
Every system needs a video player. VLC is the swiss army knife that should play just about everything. I just installed it from the Setup Wizard. Normally, I would install mplayer, but I found the mpv media player already installed. I’m not sure if it came with KDE or if it was installed as a prerequisite to some other package I installed. It works though.
Kdenlive is the Gimp of the video editing world. This is the easiest tool for rendering videos. Again, I just installed it from the Setup Wizard.
OBS Studio is great for all kinds of broadcasting. I’ve used it to Live Stream, record YouTube videos, and share my screen on Teams with the virtual camera. It’s an easy install from the Setup Wizard. There are all kinds of plugins, but I haven’t kept up with them. Currently, I don’t think that I use any of them.
yt-dlp has become a nice tool for downloading videos. I install it with the “yt-dlp” package from Octopi. This is a fork of the youtube-dl program that I used a while ago, which worked better at least at the time I switched.
Handbrake is great for converting video. It’s handy when you get a webm video but you need it to be in the mp4 format to use with another program. A while back, I had an issue that the Windows version of Handbrake would create mp4 output, but the Linux version would create m4v format, so I’m saving this article.
Blender is the last video program that I installed. It was in the setup wizard. I have used it mostly for working with 3D files, but it will also do video editing like Kdenlive. For some reason, I just keep coming back to Kdenlive for that kind of thing.
I used to use OBS Studio for recording my screen, but one video turned out horrible. I probably just needed to tweak my settings, but doing some research recommended using a screen recording app specifically for recording. I saw that the GPU Screen Recorder was recommended. I installed it from Octopi with the “gpu-screen-recorder” package.