Many years ago I wrote a series on “reviving your old PC with Linux“, a topic which still remains in active discussion all around the Linuxy corners of the Interwebs. Most of what I wrote still applies, so long as you shift things forward seven years into the future. But as someone who continues to engage in the hobby (and discussion of the hobby) of foisting free operating systems on whatever decaying PC hulks float my way, I thought I’d write up random thoughts about the subject in response to things people say or the changes in computing. A bit of a rant, a bit of state-of-the-union, and a little thinking out-loud on the topic of old hardware running old faithful.
Tkinter: not dead yet!
If you follow my posts or projects much, you know that, when it comes to GUI toolkits for Python, I’m a confirmed PyQT guy. QT is arguably the most advanced, polished, complete, and powerful GUI toolkit do-everything programming library out there, and a treat to use. But sometimes it’s overkill, and when I have to put together something quick for certain legacy OS that lack decent package management, having to load in Python and extra libraries just to get a couple text fields and a button doesn’t make sense1.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a really simple, easy to use, lightweight graphics toolkit built right in to the standard Python libraries, so you could pop together those little one-window GUIs without loading in extra stuff? Well, hey, what’s this dusty thing over here in the corner? It looks like… Tkinter!?!??
How and Why to dump your Word Processor
The word processor has been a part of computing platforms since the earliest days of the home computer; I’ve used a number them over the years, including PFS-write on the Apple IIc, WordPerfect (both DOS and Windows versions), Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, and AbiWord.
A couple years ago, though, I got frustrated with the whole word processor concept, and found a way to create text documents that works a lot better for me. This article aims to describe the how and why of that move, for the benefit of others who find they just don’t like working with word processing software.
Debian for Ubuntu people
It’s no secret that many people’s first Linux experience these days is on Ubuntu; yet as they — for one reason or another — find themselves needing to branch out into the wider Free OS world, Debian is often the next stop along the road. Having introduced a few Ubuntu users (in real life or online) to Debian, I’ve noticed a few common stumbling blocks, and thought it might be nice to offer a little guide for those making the transition (or expansion) to Ubuntu’s parent distro.
It’s also no secret that there tends to be a bit of friction between the Debian and Ubuntu communities, both users and developers, for a variety of reasons. For the record, I appreciate and use both distributions quite a bit, so I hope that this article will help users from both camps have a healthy appreciation for the other.
Trying out Ubuntu 12.04? My tips
Ubuntu 12.04 is nearly upon us, and probably will be by the time anyone bothers to read this post. With all the excitement and general hubbub around it, I imagine it will result in a lot of people unfamiliar with Ubuntu or GNU/Linux trying it out for the first (or first-in-a-long-) time.
There is a lot of good general advice out there, but I’m going to give a few specific tips of my own for folks trying it out:
