Experiment: I've Got My Editor Using Linux

Tux, designed in Gimp by Larry Ewing, is the Linux mascot

There isn't that much variety in the office: Florence, Romain and Sam all use Macs, while everybody else (a dozen of them!) run Windows.  If you add the non-journalist staff, they're all on Windows too, although they do occasionally use other OS for other jobs.  Tristan, meanwhile, uses a mixture of Windows and OS X.

And what about GNU/Linux?  Just one of us the whole time: me!  Other people do use it now and again, notably to surf the web without having to watch out for viruses and other problems, but they're all Windows-users at heart.  But having heard so many times that Linux is now a mature system, and doesn't need to be any more complicated than anything else, Vincent wanted to try it too. 

The Experiment

Vincent's computer is going to be spending a week running Linux.  We decided to give him Ubuntu, for two reasons: the first is its excellent reputation for usability, and the second because of Wubi.  This tool allows you can install Linux on the same hard drive as Windows—without having to repartition.  It's perfect for giving it a go without any stress, and uninstall it in Windows if you decide it's not for you.

So Vincent is going to have to make do with Linux for a week.  For publishing articles, there won't be that much of a difference, as both Firefox and Chrome work with our web-based interface.  For e-mail, Outlook is off the agenda, so it will either be Thunderbird or Gmail, which will give him a chance to see if it's possible to work just with web-based tools.  For any spreadsheets, that means it will be Google Documents, or if that doesn't work OpenOffice.  He'll be able to edit video with PiTiVi, and retouch his photos in our old favourite, Gimp.

Installation

We only had one teething problem with the hardware: Vincent's Nvidia graphics card powers two screens, one of which is in portrait orientation.  That's exactly the one set-up that the manufacturer's proprietary drivers can't handle: they either rotate the image on both screens by 90° or not at all.  The company's firm stance on keeping its technological secrets to itself means that the open source alternatives don't handle 3D acceleration.  Then again, given that this is a computer used primarily for office work, 3D effects and the latest games aren't exactly top of the list.  The open source drivers handle everything else perfectly, including the colour profiles for the two separate monitors.


Gnome always displays its menus on one of the two screens, so we just switched the cables round.  Murphy's Law had it that the 'primary' monitor was the one plugged into the second port on the graphics card ...

All of the other hardware worked without a hitch: that includes a Core 2 Duo E4500 CPU, 4 GB of RAM, a GeForce 8600 GT graphics card and two monitors, one by Belinea, and the other by Dell.  The peripherals are from Logitech, and include an Illuminated keyboard, a G500 mouse, a QuickCam Pro 4000 and a Wireless H760 headset.  Everything was recognised straight away, right down to the play/pause buttons on the side of the headphones.  We didn't have to install any extra drivers.

As we explained earlier, we installed Ubuntu for Vincent 'in Windows', using Wubi.  It's a simple, risk-free way to give it a spin.  Including the time it took to download an ISO image, the whole thing was over in about an hour.  Afterwards, we ran the Ubuntu Start script to quickly add some software and codecs that aren't included by default (Chrome, Flash ...).  The hardest part was downloading Vincent's 11 GB of e-mail!

Ready to go ...

He was a little bit nervous at first, but now Vincent is ready for his first week using Linux.  Let's see how it goes ...


> Buyer's Guides: Our Pick of The Best Products