[thelist] would-be linux desktop user

[Simon Willison]

Hi Pete,

Monday, July 28, 2003, 3:31:20 AM, you wrote:
> That said, I have been taking stock of what I
> actually use that is windows dependant, and there are really two
> applications that keep me in win32 world:

> Microsoft SQL Enterprise Manager
> and
> Allaire Homesite 5.0

> with the obvious runner up, MS IE 6.0 being something that is not so
> easily replaced.

Have you tried Firebird yet? It's an IE killer for certain - I've
converted a number of experienced internet users to it in the past and
few have not been instantly hooked. I won't bore the list with the
usual list of reasons for switching as they are well covered by this
page:

http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why/

It's available on Windows and Linux, and I use it on both. The only
downside is that there are a small number of misguided sites that
disallow users not using IE, but you can often get in to those anyway
using a Firebird extension that fakes your user agent.

> There are lots of programs that can connect to an MS-SQL database and do
> basic things like adding tables, but I have yet to see anything that
> allows access to scheduling, backups, transaction packages, and
> replication.

That's the tricky one. Are these things that you need to do with a
GUI? If so, you're probably out of luck. If you can do them using
standard SQL statements though there are certainly plenty of packages
that will let you talk to MS SQL. You could always use something like
WINE which lets you run many Windows packages on Linux, but I've heard
it's quite tricky to set up.

> Likewise, Homesite is the best coding environment I've ever encountered,
> and I've tried most of them. Among other things, it has really good FTP
> integration, a well thought out user interface, and powerful site wide
> search and replace.

This is the one thing I had most trouble with when I switched to using
Linux on the desktop. Linux (and the open source world in general) has
a huge number of high quality text editors, but most of them are power
tools which have a tough learning curve before you can use them
effectively. The two classic Linux editors are Emacs and Vim, both of
which are incredibly powerful and both of which take several weeks (if
not months) to learn. That said, KATE for KDE (the KDE Advanced Text
Editor) is easy to learn but has the features you mention, and Quanta
Plus is a very capable open source HTML editor.

In my experience, Linux on the desktop is still rough around the edges
but trying it makes for a great learning experience and with
perseverance it's possible to get hooked, and end up even more
productive than you are on Windows. It's a tough learning curve
though. My recommendation would be to get hold of a good modern distro
(Mandrake 8 and Red Hat 9 are both superb; I haven't tried the latest
SuSE) and set it up as a dual boot with windows. Boot in to Linux for
a while and see how much you can get done with it.

Good luck!

Simon
-- 
http://simon.incutio.com/