That Net Site

Yes the title is correct, and while I was a 95% convert to linux (Ubuntu) I have had to return to windows.  Why you ask?  Well various reasons but mainly due to time and the need to keep dropping back in and out of Windows too often.  I need to make it clear first up that it is not linux or the linux communities fault for my return to Windows but more a lack of support from the larger software companies to support a growing linux market.

So let me get down to my reasons as I am sure any hard core linux user is shaking his/her head in disbelief

Web browsing and e-mail – worked flawlessly as I was able to use the same applications as I did in Windows (Firefox and Thunderbird)

Web Development – HTML/XHTML – I was generally happy using Bluefish to replace my long and well used Homesite, and while it was not in my opinion as good as Homesite it was still usable and I could live with it.

Web Development – CSS – This is one of those things that really bugged me, I have been a long time user of Topstyle Pro as it fits great with Homesite.  On my hunt for a comparable product in linux the best that could be had was CSSed, not bad but far from a great CSS editor.  While other editors existed I did not find one that even came close to TopStyle, however in the attempt to remain with linux I utilised the CSS functions within BlueFish.

Graphics Work – I have been a long time Photoshop (and previously Paint Shop Pro) user, so this was one area I thought I would have trouble with.  However to my surprise Gimp provided a very effective and fully functional comparable (or even better) product.  I must hand it to the guys over at Gimp land for a fantastic product – excellent work.  So if your in need of a graphics or photo application save your money and get Gimp.

PDF Creation and editing – This was a big issue for me as I constantly had to command line options (ImageMagick) to convert files from PDF to other formats as there appeared to be a bug in the conversion process (Poppler) that would cause quite poor gradient and transparency conversions, especially if you wanted to convert from PDF to PNG/JPG.  Creating PDFs was a breeze as you can do that from any application, however editing them is a little more difficult.  There is simply no editor that is as feature rich as Adobe Acrobat and for what I need I needed that ability to be perfect.  This is probably my main reason for having to go back to Windows for now.

Accounting – While GnuCash is there and it works well I find Quickbooks to be more intuitive and easier to use (I am not an accountant and don’t wish to be).  I will have to admit here though I did not give GnuCash a good enough chance to grow on me.

DVD Backup – This might be more my lack of experience with linux than an issue with the selection of linux applications, however where my time is limited I needed a simply backup solution that worked.  I tried various solutions available but I ended up having to boot back into Windows to make the copies needed – I now have plenty of coasters….. This would have to be the second main reasons for going back to Windows.

Video Capture – One of the things I do is convert video to DVD (tape to DVD) and I have a solution here to do that that I was not able to get working well in linux.  While I got it to work and recognise the USB connection that connects to the Video player the streaming through to the recording and then to DVD was not equal to what I could do on Windows – again this might be my lack of knowledge with the linux command line options, but again I did not have time to learn it all at this time.

HD Video Capture – First was to try and get linux to recognise my HG21, ok did that.  Then to download the videos which seemed to take forever but the same in Windows also – they are very large files.  Now to convert to other formats for SD and YouTube etc.  This took a heck of a lot of time, so much that I had to stop, however I will say that the end result was so much better than windows that I am setting up a dedicated machine just for this.  Kino is just great

Printing – wow and fantastic – CUPS makes sharing printers a snap – great work

Office – While it is not MS Office 2007 I found that Open Office was more than sufficient, however sharing files with others in the office would be a little annoying having to save as .doc and .xls etc so that they can be shared.  I actually liked the more simplistic layout as it gave me what I needed without having to fumble around with the Office 2007 ribbon trying to find how to format, replace and modify content.

Audio editing – Audicity works just as good in Linux as it did in Windows

Wacom Tablet – Arghhh this was a real pain.  I tried everything to get this working in linux as it does in Windows – maybe that is the issue I cannot get it to replicate what it does in Windows.  I read through and (tried) to follow the tutorials on how to set it up from the wacomproject, I even contacted Wacom support with little help.  While I got the pen to work, the buttons and the circle of my Bamboo Fun did not and could not get to work.

FTP – This was a pain initially I started to having to use gFTP but wanted to use FileZilla but I was using the 64bit version of Ubuntu and FileZilla would not install, however I found a way via the online forums to get it to work – wonderful

Synchronise/Backup – A major requirement for us is the ability to synchronise/backup our data.  Now having all been Windows to now having a linux box in the mix I still needed to be able to synchronise two machines on a regular basis.  While a storage server (it is coming) would be a better option we at this stage (budget) backup each others data to each others alternative computer.  In Windows I have used SyncBack for years – works flawlessly on every file, hidden and system and also open files.  Unison was what I tried to get working as the alternative which worked after many tedious attempts at configuring it.

The rest of what I used I got use to in linux quite quickly… so why did I convert back to Windows you ask as the above seems quite convincing to stay with linux.

Well computability was the main issue, second is time for having to go back to the terminal to run command line options that I could do in Windows with a single click (yes I know I could script but the options would change nearly every time) as well as the main two points above being my work with PDF files and video capture.  While I did run a dual boot and could also use virtual Box for Windows the need to either boot back up into Windows or use the virtual window was becoming more a pain than an asset.  I know it might seem like a minor reason but that is that.  I still have a Ubuntu (and I am about to try Mandriva) boot option my daily computer work is with Windows.

I will I am sure make the permanent move to linux over the next 12 months as I need to keep my costs down and to be totally honest my PC ran swifter, faster and well… just nicer under linux.

So you can call me a just about linux user, it nearly had me converted and as it continues to mature with the fantaistic community it has more people like myself will move over to linux as the preferred OS of choice.

Following on from last post I thought I’d add a new post to say I am now a linux (ubuntu) convert.   I have given it a real go and so far I am very impressed with it giving my PC a new lease on life with far superior execution times and file handling.

As the title suggests I am 95% converted as I still need Windows for a few applications, although I am sure I will soon find replacements for them soon.

What I was using to what I am using;

Firefox -> Firefox
Thunderbird Email -> Thunderbird Email
Photoshop CS4 -> Gimp
Filezilla -> gFTP
Homesite -> Bluefish
MS Office -> Open Office
Syncback SE Pro -> Unison
MSN -> Pidgin

What I am still looking for are;

Quickbooks -> while GnuCash is there I prefer Quickbooks and so does my accountant, probably simply use WINE to run it in Windoes mode within ubuntu
TopStyle -> I am using cssed but it is far from TopStyle, might just be a case of get use to it
Adobe Premier and Encore -> not yet replaced… have an idea?

One of the things I often do is read many of the forums for both Microsoft Windows and also Linux and read through the debates on what is better for what.  There is no question that if your a gamer MS Windows is the choice OS to use, but what about everything else non game?

I am tired of the fanboi Linux users that simply bag Microsoft as the evil business just for the sake of doing so and trying to make themselves appear geeky by saying linux rules.  Don’t get me wrong I am not an MS fanboi, or linux for that matter.  I have used Mac OS’s Linux OS’ and of course the Windows variety with my main PC now running dual boot Ubuntu and Vista.  But at this stage I am probably using Vista more than I use Ubuntu.

It is not that I don’t like Linux it is the familiarity of the applications I have and continue to use on Windows.  There is also this niggling fact that I own a paid for version of Vista and I kind of think well I own it so why not use it.

It is also a case of comparing what linux is trying to be, now lets face it the GUI is based on MS Windows with a little Mac OSX thrown in.  Will linux just become a Windows clone which in turn is becoming a Mac clone?  If I take ubuntu 9.04 as an example it really is an OS that is probably smack in the middle of both the Mac and MS OS’s – but is that a good thing or not?

To try and define what is better that the other is a personal choice.  I will say however that for general use the Ubuntu 9.04 install is very fast compared to Vista, but with Vista to try and compare I have many background processors running – these mainly being the firewall. virus scanner, malware checking and spyware watcher – apart from that it works a treat.  This is where linux does shine, in that if I was to go pure linux the need for those scanners is pretty much gone as linux is not as open to those issues as windows is.

So my dilemma is do I continue to use Windows Vista and when its released update to Windows 7 or do I start the major switch to linux….. tough call really and I am not sure where I stand (yet) – so what do you use and why do you use it?  I am not interested in the fanboi issues, I want to know the real reasons for your choice of OS.

There is obviously a cost factor here, in that to continue operating windows I will need to update at a cost to me , whilst with linux the updates will always be free – so long as they keep providing those updates.

Hmm to go linux or stay with MS Windows?

I have had quite a few people wanting to use the icons I put together to replace the default awful looking 7-zip ones with many requests for the dll for the 64-bit version.  Instead of trying to keep pace with the 7-zip updates what I have now done is simple created the icons and added a file to change the registry entries for the links to each icon that 7-zip uses.

The icons are simply ‘ico’ files within an icon folder, of which after you have installed 7-zip you copy the ‘icon’ folder to your 7-zip install folder, for example c:/Program Files/7-zip/ and then run/open the registry file in the archived linked below (you may need to confirm as an admin user to do this).  To show the new icons simply log-off your windows account, log back in and presto your icons are now a little nicer than the default ones

Feel free to share the zip file below, any link backs are very much appreciated

7zip Replacement Icons

Download the replacement icons

It has been many years that we have all been reading about the various antitrust cases against Microsoft for one thing or another, basically because they have a greater market share than their competitors.  While I agree competition is needed I do feel that Microsoft is simply a target that is too easy to hit.

The why, the how or the where it came from is the past in my view of what Microsoft is today. It has a greater market share than its rivals because it has a great marketing tool, easy to use software and is now the most familiar and more user friendly OS and system to use for the average computer user, and this includes Internet Explorer.  While many will claim it is buggy, and has errors etc the fact is that if any other OS or browser had the market share that Microsoft has then you would be hearing they have just as many bugs etc.

Before you comment let me first say I don’t use IE except for testing, I use and have for quite a few years used Firefox.  I also tried Google’s Chrome, and while it was all nice and shiny and seemed great to load it, in my own personal view, did not live up to my expectations and my familiarity with using Firefox with my commonly used extensions.

I use a Windows PC as my main work platform, actually all our PC’s run the various Windows versions from 98SE through to Vista Home Premium.  Why do we use WIndows versus linux vs apple.  Well without starting an OS debate and without starting a browser war the fact is that we are happy with how Windows works, we use windows applications as they install, integrate and work very well with the OS and, well, like I said we are familiar and comfortable with it.

The other night I was sitting with my kids and they were watching a DVD, WALL-E, and while sitting there I was thinking that while a cartoon the monopoly of BnL is kind of similar to many peoples/companies fear of Microsoft, in that I think there are too many that fear Microsoft will become the be all and end all of software.  Could it do that, well yes it could, but with all these antitrust  cases I guess the big companies like Google will try and stop that happening, not that I think it will happen anyway.

Google joins EU Anti-trust Case...

Also with Google now in the mix of the EU case, could Microsoft turn around and do something similar to Google and file an antitrust or monopoly type of case against Google as they are the primary and most used search engine and online email… just to mention a couple.  I mean just the other day there was panic with Google mail being down.

My view on a lot of this is that if the other providers like Google, Mozilla and Opera want a greater market share then they need to ensure they have a better tool for others to use.  While I think Firefox is a better browser the average person either does not know it exists or does not like how it works, it really is that simple.  I have family that I have tried to convert to Firefox, note convert – you actually have to forcibly get them to use another browser, but in the end I gave up, why did they not swap over well they liked how IE worked, they liked how IE looked and they were comfortable and familiar with it.

Is it Microsoft’s fault that people do not use Firefox, Chrome or Opera, no of course it isn’t.  I understand that Microsoft have their browser built into the Windows OS, which gives a perceived advantage but it IS their OS, it is their right to have their browser.  I mean your not going to go into a BMW dealer and buy a BMW car and have a Honda interior are you – so really what is the difference.  Ok so that is not quite the same but you get the idea.

I also realise Windows has the greater market share, so therefore so has IE, but I still come back to the fact that Mozilla, Opera, Google etc have themselves to blame for not having greater market share, they need to take responsibility for their own actions, get out to the greater market, develop a new OS based on Linux if they must, offer a true alternative to Windows, offer a true alternative to IE that every average person can use without having to get add-ons, without having to learn what a linux kernal is or similar.  They need to be simple, easy and available.

Or maybe just sit down with Microsoft and say, hey guys would you mind including our browser in your Windows install and thus give the end user the choice of browser they want to use – not that they have to in my view but it may be as simple as that.

I’m sure this will spark much debate as it has over the years, which is great but keep it clean