Shabbir’s Blog

It’s been a couple of days since I posted.  This has been primarily because of my shifting over to Ubuntu (7.10 Gutsy Gibbon), and it’s been amongst the best decisions I’ve ever made.  Just a couple of caveats that slowed down the entire move:

1. Firstly, I had issues with the ATI Proprietary Graphics Driver (I have an MSI Radeon X1550) in my machine, and run a dual screen setup.  The driver that installed with Ubuntu was an older version, and caused some problems, which thankfully I’ve managed to resolve.  I’ll do a complete write up on that in the next day or two.
2. Windows Live Writer was the second issue, and it was a serious issue.  I found that there was no way under wine, to get any of the Windows Live software running, more importantly (as there are equivalents available for Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Live Desktop Mail), there is however nothing remotely close to Windows Live Writer.  Which posed a pretty serious problem.

   I’d gotten so used to blogging with Windows Live Writer and it’s awesome truly WYSIWYG interface, that any of the other blogging clients simply couldn’t satisfy me.  The closest was ScribeFire (which is not really an application but a Mozilla Firefox Add-On / Extension).  What do I do?

   Well, you can see that I’m posting, and I’m using Windows Live Writer - technically on Linux!!  And I’ll explain exactly how I’ve done it in the next couple of posts (probably over the next few days - but hopefully before the week is out - if you really are urgently looking for how to do it - drop me a line at shabbir[at]hassanally.net and I’ll give you some hints. 

   Two points to consider:

   1. Is it a painful experience (using Windows Live Writer in a Linux Environment?  Yes, initially it’s very painful, but once you’re used to it - and have built up a routine you should be fine (and no it’s not dual booting - I don’t have a Windows partition)
   2. Secondly, is it something that works cleanly and reliably?  Yes, very much so, I wouldn’t have finalized my move over to Ubuntu if it didn’t!!

So now, I can use Windows Live Writer, and have the reliability of a decent operating system, a complete free operating system, so no more paying Mr Bill Gates lots of cash for the privilege of using buggy software (and downloading updates to fix the above!!).  Also, from the point of view of "eye candy", while a little more finicky to set up, it can be argued that what Compiz and Beryl do for Linux is far more than what Aero does for Windows - but again that’s another post for another day!

For now, I’m majorly happy with Ubuntu, everything works, I managed to get all my email (account settings, extensions and themes) working in Thunderbird in just a few minutes, I can use the old removable USB drives I use to store my documents on without any additional tweaking.  It’s all good!

Stay posted for the following posts over the next few days:

1. ATI Proprietary Drive Installation Instructions - Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
2. Windows Live Writer in Ubuntu (should work for any version but will be written for 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
3. Compiz/Beryl Vs Windows Aero (this post may or may not happen, depends if others have already done a good job on it, if they have I’ll just link to them - so if you’ve done a good write up on Compiz/Beryl Vs Windows Aero - drop me a line at shabbir[at]hassanally.net  and let me know!

As a point of information, I’ve been wanting to shift over - lock stock and barrel - to Linux for quite sometime, when Vista was announced, I was curious, and waited around to see it - saw it - was reasonably impressed, but not blown away.  My biggest obstacle to Linux was essentially application availability and compatibility.  I was at one point - while in Tanzania mainly - a complete Linux person, I used to use the excellent Gentoo distribution, but since it was a source based distribution (and still is as far as I know), everything was compiled - and naturally optimised for my hardware.

While this is a good thing generally speaking, it slows down the entire installation process by several orders of magnitude.  For that reason it wasn’t practical to use Gentoo as a regular desktop OS - sure for a techie not a problem, but for a regular person, or a computer newbie even, it would be disastrous - and most confusing.  Also, this is going back a few years now.  Application support wasn’t there.

Having said that - I’ve always made sure I’ve got access to a Linux box somewhere - even if it’s just lowly SSH access.  Without the $ (or # even prompt I sometimes start to twitch uncontrollably.

Anyway’s, that’s all for now folks, check back soon, as I hope to have at least one of the new posts up and running - but I’ve got some translation work to do - which is a major priority so might be a couple of days before I get around to it.

Warm Regards,

Shabbir