Rather than download the file and chew up a month’s worth of data I bought the DVD on eBay for about $10 including postage, and obtained a bonus copy of Ubuntu as well.

The great thing about Linux is that you can get a complete operating system for nothing, or just the cost of a disk.

Having not used Suse for a couple of years I was pleased to see the improvements. All my hardware was detected, including a Logitech webcam and Lexmark scanner. Windows 7 had trouble with the scanner, so that was a notable achievement.

Everything worked except my USB phone for Skype and there was a glitch with the graphics card (see below).

The easy search and one-click installation of software was a significant enhancement since my previous experience.

Google Chrome installed easily and several other Windows programs also have native Linux versions, including Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, FileZilla and Textmaker.

SoftMaker is currently offering free copies of its office software for Linux and Windows and they are donating €0.10 for every successful download to charity. There had been 30,337 downloads last time I looked, raising €3033.70.

I’m still exploring some of the latest Linux software, but one interesting program I discovered is Choqok. It’s a microblogging client for KDE that logs into multiple Twitter and Identica accounts.

It’s as good as any similar program I’ve seen on Windows (screenshot below).

I had two problems setting up Suse 11.2 that may deter novice users. The first was lack of recognition for my graphics card (ATI Radeon HD4350). I had to login using the standard Intel graphics and download a driver.

The other glitch was scratchy fonts and that required some fiddling with various settings to get it right.

Overall though I’m very pleased. If I can get the USB phone to work I will hardly have to use Windows at all, especially if I can get Photoshop and Illustrator to run under the Wine emulator; that’s my next job.

Screenshot showing Textmaker and The Gimp.

Screenshot of KDE microblogging client Choqok.

I actually don’t use MS Office much these days, but its presence is ubiquitous.

I like Atlantis for quick documents, saved to RTF format and OpenOffice is my main choice in Linux.

At work we use Pongrass for text editing and I only need Word for opening contributed documents.

There was once a time I didn’t have Word at all.

At the Alpine Times in 1997-98 we typed our articles directly into Pagemaker. I can’t remember what the typesetters did (people who entered sporting results, letters, media releases, etc). They probably used Notepad or something like that.

We also had Lotus Notes. Reporters generally typed their articles in that program before saving them to Pagemaker.

Email was relatively new in those days. Most media releases still came by fax or post.

Lotus Notes back then couldn’t open .doc files. Imagine that!

Once I received a contributed article by email in Word format and had to explain that we couldn’t open it; please resend it as plain text or RTF.

To his credit, the gentleman seemed impressed we weren’t running Windows for everything.

It’s impossible to operate that way today, however.

Lotus Symphony

What prompted this post was the free availability of Lotus Symphony.

I have tried it in Windows before and tonight downloaded the Linux version. It’s a fully featured free word processor based on OpenOffice and the Open Document Format (ODF) with easy conversion to PDF among many other features.

It’s able to save files in .doc format and open them.

The only downside compared with something like Atlantis is the large file size, a massive 455MB in Linux.

It’s the first site I have ever come across which does not view sensibly in Linux. The response:

“Thanks for letting us know. Based on the fact that only .36% of our traffic originates from Linux users, we cannot currently justify the time, money and manpower to amend this issue. We can look into adding this to future tasks.”

Sorry for pointing it out.

I suspect it is a simple stylesheet issue related to fonts. I could probably do it myself and a professional web developer should be able to fix it in half an hour.

It’s interesting only 0.36% of visitors to that site are Linux users (guess why). I checked my own stats and 1.24% of people come here from Linux desktops, admittedly from a much smaller base.

But according to these stats, 1.89% of worldwide desktops use Linux. This source puts the number at 0.67%.

Surprisingly to me, 0.71% of my visitors use Windows 98. I didn’t know anyone still used Windows 98.

Somewhere along the line, I messed up an upgrade and moved away. By the time I revisited Kanotix it seemed to have lost impetus. Indeed, the last news items on the site today are from 2006.

I believe there was a split between the lead developers and one of them branched out to help create Sidux. I’ve now got Sidux installed in parallel with Windows Vista and I’m very impressed.

I had some initial glitches with screen resolution and fonts, but once they were sorted I’ve had no problems. It is a fast, attractive desktop which is easy to keep up to date.

The three Linux-only programs are Digikam (photo organiser), Bluefish (web editor) and Kontact (organiser/email). The 12 cross-platform applications are:

• Firefox (web browser)
• OpenOffice (office suite)
• The Gimp (image editor)
• Pidgin (instant messenger)
• Acrobat Reader (PDF reader)
• VLC (movie player)
• Songbird (desktop web player)
• RealPlayer (audio and movie player)
• PeaZip (archive utility)
• Skype (phone/messenger)
• JFTP (file transfer)
• Frostwire (file sharing).

The last two are interesting in that they are java programs.

The common use of these programs across operating systems shows that Linux is a valid option for desktop users who don’t want to pay a lot of money for Windows or software. It makes the transition less difficult.

That's partly because I switch between Linux and Windows, home and work too regularly to build content and maintain loyalty.

I have found one though, called Gregarius, that I might persist with for a while.

It's a free PHP/SQL program that you upload to your own web site. It has an admin control panel where you can create categories and add feeds.

It uses Suse Linux and provides a limited number of programs with the free service. These include Firefox, Gaim, Evolution, Open Office Writer and Digikam.

There are options to install the virtual computer on a PC or USB memory stick. I’m currently testing it with an installation on my laptop’s hard drive. I’m effectively running a Linux system in parallel with Windows XP and I’m able to switch easily between the two.

It all appears to be very new. I signed up for the free service and received a login code on my mobile phone. There are two web sites, the other being here and seemingly more pitched at a youth audience. Neither has a support forum. I can’t tell if it’s only available in Australia and New Zealand at this stage or not.

Technical details are a little sketchy and the best I could find are here.

The business model appears to involve enticing users to upgrade to commercial accounts with more programs and greater data storage.

The free account has 20MB online storage and 10MB email, which isn’t much compared with Gmail for example.

Linux and Mac versions are said to be under development and there is a web launcher version which I haven’t yet tried.

I have found it to be a nifty and interesting tool. The idea of a secure personal area for online data storage has some appeal as a way to backup documents and photos. The company says it’s secure; just got to hope they don’t collapse like Veridas and take your documents with them.

At this early stage I would say it’s a good alternative to running portable applications on a USB stick. It’s also a good way to introduce newbies to Linux and open source.

Kanotix was previously my preference, but an upgrade disaster forced us apart.

That’s when I discovered PCLinuxOS.

It’s based on the commercial Mandriva, but it’s better and comes free on a single CD.

It comes with useful software and an easy-to-upgrade system. It looks good and should be simple to adapt for Windows users.

There are no negative vibes from this user after a week in action.

I finally went ahead and the system shock was all too much. I had the black screen of death, but it locked on me and I couldn’t even get a command prompt. I know I could have repaired things using a live CD, but I took the opportunity instead of a new experiment.

I have read plenty of times that Gentoo is a serious Linux diehard distro with nothing user friendly for newbies and novices. Although not very computer literate in the developer sense, I’ve been using Linux now for two years and thought it was time to take the plunge.

So far it’s been an interesting experiment and I’m still undecided if Gentoo is a long-term option for me. I installed from the live CD, which sets up a pretty basic system with Gnome, OpenOffice and Firefox the key user features.

I had trouble getting X to start on my Dell Inspiron 640m laptop. It took several attempts and a rescue mission with my Puppy live CD to get the configuration right. That gave me a sense of achievement to carry on.

Gentoo has a “portage” package management system. It’s similar, I suppose, to Debian’s apt-get, but it takes a long time to compile applications using the “emerge” command.

My other immediate challenge was to get rid of the scratchy fonts in Firefox. I haven’t figured out how to install new fonts yet, because I can’t access my Windows partition to copy some across, but I did fix the aesthetics problem.

An example of how complicated Gentoo can be was the instructions for making fonts look like they should.

It works though and I now have smooth fonts. Again there is a warm inner glow from mastering the process. Who wants the ease of Kanotix, where everything works out of the box, so to speak, and you can spend hours learning new tricks?

Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Makes for an interesting experience though.

KDE has been compiling for the past couple of hours. I’m curious to see how the laptop performs under my preferred desktop environment and may report back here later with a screenshot.

It’s a cross-platform program that also works in Windows and Mac. I’ve got it running successfully in Windows XP and Suse 10.

It’s more intuitive and user friendly for Windows converts than the Gimp and has the added advantage for a print professional of working with CMYK color separations.

Last I checked, the Gimp needed an unreliable plugin to do this.

It cost me $45 for a licence, which will turn off the open source brigade, but in my view it’s great value compared with Photoshop and others.

I haven’t fully tested it yet, but like what I’ve seen so far. The registration process isn’t all that simple and I’m still getting glitches. Apart from that it looks a treat.

Update (January 2011): The main site hasn’t been updated since 2009 and the forum has been deleted. Visit Wikipedia for more information.