This diary isn't merely a statement against candidate diaries. There are a number of legitimate reasons to discuss the use of Open Source software in a political community like dKos. Open Source software fits a lot of the core values of liberal thinking, and a well-planned and properly supported office using Linux and Open Source applications can save a lot of money over an office using Windows.
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I've tried to blog about Linux in the past, with varying levels of success. I set up a domain, www.linux-blog.com, but never got any traction in terms of my thoughts to make it a worthwhile project. While on breaks in class today, I decided to give it another shot, and start talking about making Ubuntu Linux my primary operating system on Arod, my notebook computer.
Arod is my Acer C310 tablet notebook system. He's got 512mb of RAM and came with XP installed. So far, I haven't reached a point where I need more with this system, so I'm hanging on to it. Like all my travel computers, I've always wanted to have it dual-boot, Linux of some flavor to play with and Windows because I get paid too much to screw around if it's crunch time. Bottom line is, there are a lot of PowerPoint presentations and Word documents that just don't look the same in OpenOffice.org.
That said, I do most of my work in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) these days. I installed Ubuntu back in October. I'm Charlie Brown and Linux is my Lucy. I see the football, I run to kick it, the football vanishes, and I land on my back. I think I've kicked it this time.
I've found a great resource in my quest to replace XP, The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. The author's goal was to replace Windows with open source apps for audio and video editing/manipulation. The stuff added to a basic Ubuntu install through this resource is a great start for me.
So far, the bulk of my time in Ubuntu has been using Firefox and Thunderbird. I've been experimenting with plugins for both, making judgements whether or not a specific task is best done inside the browser or with a separate application.
First application up is something to blog with. In Windows, I use either , Scribefire in Firefox, or a freeware program called wbloggar. In Linux, my choices are Scribfire again, or BloGTK as a replacement for wbloggar.
A lot of bloggers will wonder why bother with a client that's separate from the blog software itself in the first place. If you've ever had dKos, WordPress, or Blogger lock up and vanish in the middle of a diary you were writing, you'll appreciate the usefulness of working in a local client. You can type up your entry, spell-check, etc., locally, then either post directly to your blog, or (in the case of sites like dKos) copy/paste the finished entry into the site's page.
Scribefire is a "plugin" for the Firefox web browser. The idea is to allow you to stay in the browser while blogging, making it a bit easier to link to other sites, copy/paste, etc. From a technical perspective, using a blogging client that's part of the browser means less network stuff to configure anyway. I found Scribefire to be a good entry point for my Moveable Type-based blogs. Unfortuntately, I got curious with Firefox and upgraded to the beta-test version, 3.02, and the Scribefire plugin is not compatible.
No biggie, back to the stand-alone client. I use BloGTK, a basic blog-entry client that supports blogs based on Blogger, Moveable Type, WordPress, and other platforms. BloGTK has a solid editor with spellcheck, with basic html formatting capabilities:
So far, BloGTK has delivered the same functionality I got with the Windows-based program. Chalk up this application as a win for moving away from Windows.