[NCLUG] Living without windows? LONG

[J. Paul Reed]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2002, Rich Young wrote:

> 1) She is not a computer hobbyist, and wants the simplest user experience
> availlable to her.  Microsoft doesn't make her angry, but she loses
> patience quickly with computers that don't do what she expects them to.

I would recommend KDE; it's very customizable, but can be very
Windows-like, if the user wants it that way.

KDE isn't perfect, but it will try her patience the least of everything
else that's out there.

> 	-word processing & compatibility with MSWord (StarOffice?)

StarOffice is nice, but for the more complex Word docs (typically, docs
with either fonts that don't readily map to anything on Unix or docs that
have embedded charts/objects/etc.), StarOffice barfs... which is to be
expected. I would recommend playing around with OpenOffice
(www.openoffice.org), which is the next version of StarOffice.

I don't have to use an office suite very often, but OpenOffice seems very
nice.

> 	-scanner use (HP 6200C) & basic image editing (Jasc PaintShop Pro,
> 	ideally)

You already know about Gimp... so that's a no brainer; scanning might be
more interesting, though.

I was going to recommend XVScan, but I see the tummy.com folks have stopped
selling it; maybe they have recommendations about where to go for scanning,
though?

http://www.mostang.com/sane/ might also be of some use.

> 	-of course, printing (HP 810C)

RedHat's printtool should have an entry for this printer...

> 	-Visual Basic (I teach a VB-for-beginning-programmers class)

Start teaching perl. ;-)

> 	-MS Access (another class I teach, plus freelance uses....)

Start teaching PostgreSQL. Or MySQL, if you want more in MS Access' league.

> 	-web and database development (no real problem, though I'll miss
> 	TextPad...)

There are a ton of TextPad clones out there (or more accurately, TextPad
clones some of the best features of vi/emacs); I'd recommend just sitting
down and *learning* vi/gvim or emacs/xemacs (I'd vote for vi, since I like
Linux as an OS, not emacs); I'm sure you'll find either of them more
powerful, and more enjoyable.

If you just have to have something like TextPad, as I said, KDE has its own
version, as does Gnome; you might also look into JEdit.

> 	So, I guess my question (finally!) is: will this work?  Can I, with
> 	some combination of WINE & substitute linux apps, stay productive
> 	as a developer, teach my classes, and give my wife a computing
> 	experience comparable to what she's enjoyed on windows for the last
> 	decade?

Yes. It's entirely possible.

A couple of things to note: I estimate that about the first two months of
your (and your wife's) Linux-using experience will be HELL. *Expect* this,
but *resist* the temptation to pull out that 98 disk to re-install.

Trust me... it will go away. And after about three or so months of using
your Linux-box, you *won't* want to go back; you can just do so many
clever, useful things with Linux that you couldn't even begin to do on
'doze.

Another thing to note: you probably won't be productive with WINE. Granted,
I haven't used WINE in awhile, but I got frustrated with it because stuff
kept crashing at the weirdest times, and it's just a pain in the butt when
you need Word or FooApp 2002 to work, *with* all of its weird OLE/COM+
extensions, and work w/o crashing (well, due to its environment, anyway).

I *highly* recommend you grab a copy of VMWare (especially if you're
using/teaching VB) and install a 98 virtual machine. VMWare costs something
like $300 (damn... they upped the price from a mere $100 when I bought it;
they seem to have academic pricing... you might check that out if you teach
classes and can send them the verification they want), but you'll probably
save that amount in time it would take you to debug WINE anomalies.  VMWare
just works (tm). There are other programs (Win4Lin, which costs
significantly less, but I personally had problems getting it to work) that
do the same thing... you might check into those as well.

This will also make working on your Access/VB stuff significantly easier
and you won't have to deal with weird WINE peculiarities. *And* when
Windows misbehaves, it argues with VMWare, it *doesn't* crash your machine.

The other nifty thing I've done with my VMWare install is I've created a
pristine install of Win98 and then copied the volume file and burned it
onto CD; this way, you can easily beat the "re-install Windows every 6
months"-bug by just copying that volume file back into place, and you have
a pristine install again; all my data files sit on my Linux partition, so I
don't have to worry about that. It also helps for viewing those few
webpages that insist on IE, or even viewing QuickTime vids (assuming your
processor is fast enough... they're viewable, albeit chunky on my PIII
450).

Good luck, and welcome to the 24/7 (100+ day uptime ;-) crowd.

Later,
Paul
    ------------------------------------------------------------------
    J. Paul Reed            preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
    What's the point in being nuts if you can't have a little fun?
                                   -- John Nash, Jr., A Beautiful Mind