The only problem I’ve had is this: it wouldn’t remember the window size and position of the desktop app on my Ubuntu machine. I installed CrashPlan as root as suggested by the installer (so that it can backup anything on the system). This put CrashPlan in /usr/local/crashplan, owned by root. Turns out that CrashPlan desktop wants to save window geometry in /usr/local/crashplan/conf. But it can’t because I run the desktop app as me, not as root.

So, the fix would be for CrashPlan to store user settings in the user’s home directory (for example ~/.crashplan/ui.properties). But the workaround until that happens is to manually create a properties file in the /usr/local/crashplan/conf folder that CrashPlan desktop has access to. Open a terminal and type:

cd /usr/local/crashplan/conf
USERNAME=`whoami`
sudo touch ui_$USERNAME.properties
sudo chown $USERNAME ui_$USERNAME.properties

That creates an empty properties file in the crashplan directory with your username that you have access to. You should be able to just copy that into a terminal. Double check the directory where CrashPlan is installed and note the backticks. My username is john so it creates a file named ui_john.properties. The next time you close CrashPlan, it will be able to write to that file so it will remember its window position and size.

You can also press and release Ctrl+Shift+U, then a unicode hex value, then space. That’s equivalent to the Windows Alt+<unicode> shortcut. Get the hex values from the Character Map in the Accessories menu.

Over the weekend I created a photo uploader for Linux, specifically for Gnome desktop users:

I’m looking for some people who can install and try the package out before I release it publicly. Ideally I’d like several people to run the installer (a .deb package) and make sure it does all the right things. I’m targeting Ubuntu but (in theory) the .deb should work on any Debian system and a tarball is also available. A mix of technical and non-technical users would be nice. Please only respond if you are able to spend some time using the app and share feedback with me via email. Contact me if you’re interested.

And today I needed it (timing, eh?). A bunch of important files took collateral damage from a program I was writing. And I almost panicked. But then the backup system worked beautifully. And I did a happy dance. And, no, there is no video of that.

If I’d been manually backing up weekly I’d be able to salvage some and rebuild the rest and be very annoyed. If I’d been manually backing up my files every month or so I’d be screwed.

The backup system I use (rdiff-backup) takes a system snapshot once every 24 hours and keeps a rolling 30 day history (sort of like a less anxious version of Time Machine). So I’m able to restore my system to its state at any day within the last 30 days.

Anyway, it works. In five minutes it was like it never happened. Yay, technology!

Last week I asked for some help finding a new note taking application. I was becoming frustrated with BasKet Note Pads because, despite all of its great features, it would intermittently delete notes when I moved them (obviously, unacceptable).

Otherwise, BasKet is a very good application for general note taking if you like the outline variety and especially if you like decorating your notes with stickers and badges. I’m sure they’ll get the bugs worked out in a future version and its possible that others won’t experience my problems with it so I still recommend it.

Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions. For now I’ve switched away from BasKet and started using Tomboy. Tomboy is a desktop wiki application (kind of like sticky notes on steroids). I was initially turned off because I’ve found wikis cumbersome to keep updated.

One of the things I don’t like about wikis, for example, is the need to manually create index pages. But I’ve discovered that Tomboy solves that problem fairly well through its search system. When you open the search window you immediately see an index of every page. Neat. Then entering keywords into the search box filters that list down (using a full-text search) to just the matching pages. (And when you open those pages, the matching term is highlighted.)

I also don’t like WikiCapitalizingSentences and was worried that re-titling a page would break all of the incoming links. Neither of those is a problem with Tomboy either since the first isn’t required (it’s not even the default) and it automagically renames all inbound links with the new title.

Tomboy also has three things that I think make it great for to-do lists: 1) You can easily create a bulleted list by starting a line with a hyphen 2) You can highlight important items (Ctrl-H) in yellow and 3) You can check off completed items by either deleting them or by drawing a line through them (Ctrl-S).

So what I’ve done is setup separate pages for each of my projects and then I can cross-link my to-dos directly to a project page just by typing its name. It’s organization without the need to fiddle with a note hierarchy outline and I can view my project page and to-dos at the same time (BasKet only lets you view one thing at a time). Pretty slick.

Overall, I find its apparent simplicity appealing. It works a lot like how I use my Moleskine note books with the added benefits of hyperlinking between pages and a built-in search function. I’m no longer tempted to fiddle with page layout, icons, or colors and basic text entry (especially for lists) is much more natural in Tomboy than in BasKet. I’ve only been using it for a few days so far, but barring any unforeseen problems I think I’ll be using Tomboy for a lot longer.

I also have a need for taking notes and keeping my notes organized, searchable, and visible. I was using text files for this but was finding it difficult to maintain a useful naming convention and enable easy searching across files. Maybe it’s a lack of discipline, but these files would find themselves all over my system rather than being in one place. And because they’re tucked away in a folder someplace they’re not visible and they tend to become forgotten and lost just when I need them.

“Aha!” you’re thinking. “He should use Backpack.” I do think Backpack is a worthy application and I tried to use it for a while. But I actually preferred the simpler to-do list management of Tadalist to Backpack. Also, I need to keep track of server passwords and registration information and the like and I just don’t feel comfortable storing that online. Also, I’d need hundreds of pages and I’m cheap.

Onlineness used to outweigh the need for 100% uptime, but now that I do all of my computing in one location it’s not a factor anymore. Earlier this year Remember The Milk was down for hours and I couldn’t access any of my lists. That sucked.

Most recently, I’ve been using BasKet Notepads. It’s fairly nice with a rich user interface that allows you to tag and put meaningful icons next to items. You can organize all of your information in an outline view on the left and view free form or multi-column pages on the right. Pages can consist of to-do lists, free form notes, web links, pictures, etc. A few warts but very nice overall. Except that every once in a while, for no apparent reason, it deletes some of my notes.

So, I’m searching for a new note-taking application.

I’m looking for a desktop application that allows me to create text notes and to-do lists. Ideally I’d like it to create an outline view of all of my pages. I need to be able to search all of my notes and lists. It’d be nice if it could store images and formatted text. It needs to be able to export all of the information in its database to a human readable format like plain text or HTML. I’m not particularly keen on the Wiki concept but I’ll allow you to convince me. Free or very cheap would be nice.

It doesn’t all have to be one application. Maybe you have a great system for storing all of this in a hundred text files and use a separate application for searching—I’d love to hear about it. I’m looking for solutions for Linux but share whatever you’ve got. It may be something I could adapt.

Please share your suggestions. Please share how you are managing your notes and lists. Help!

My goals were to remove Windows and re-dedicate the drive as backup storage. There are easier ways to do this. For example, I could have simply deleted all of the files on the Windows drive and been done.

But because I’m human and often irrational and for aesthetic and symbolic reasons, I wanted the Windows drive to become /dev/sdb1 and I wanted to reformat it for the ext3 file system. So, here’s what I did:

[ Follow this procedure at your own risk! If you come whining to me that you blew up your computer I will feel your pain, shake my head sadly, send you some good vibes and not write you back. ]

1. Download Ubuntu and create a bootable live CD. This will be your rescue tool if you screw up. You may also want to create a backup of your important files, just in case.
2. Reboot into the Live CD.
3. Open a console and start GRUB:

   $ sudo grub

4. Find your Linux drive (the result shown here says Linux is on device hd2):

   grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd2, 0)

5. Install GRUB into the MBR of the Linux drive:

   grub> root(hd2, 0)
grub> setup(hd2)

6. Since I was changing the physical order of my drives, I edited /boot/grub/menu.lst and changed all references to the old drive (hd1) to the new one (hd0).
7. I also deleted the Windows boot entries in menu.lst.
8. I don’t know if this is strictly necessary, but I used gparted to add the “boot” flag to the Linux drive’s root partition.
9. Then I powered down and physically switched drive channels so that the Ubuntu drive would be hd0.
10. Then I rebooted. It worked. :-)

There are a lot of ways you can mess this up, but as long as you don’t reformat or delete anything, even if you can’t boot, all of your data and files are still there. With the live CD handy you can still get on the internet and find help and get at all of the files on your drives if necessary.

Read the GRUB manual. Make sure you check your BIOS and it is using the correct hard drive for booting. Also, if GRUB loads but can’t boot your system, you can get into a console and/or edit menu entries on the fly from there which will allow you to try different device numbers until you find one that works (and when it does, write it down and edit your menu.lst appropriately).

It’s been very nearly a year now and I’m happy to report that not only am I still using Linux on my main desktop computer on a daily basis, I haven’t had any need or desire to boot into Windows in a long time. So long, in fact, that I can’t remember the last time I did.

Browsing Flickr in Firefox, watching a CNN video podcast in Miro, listening to music with Amarok. The icons are hard to make out but the first two are Civ 4 and Age of Empires 3. Yes, this is Linux.

A couple of days ago I was hunting around for a new removable storage system for making backups (I have about 200 G of memories and important files) when I realized that I already had a spare 320 G hard drive just sitting idle: my Windows paritition.

I poked through it to see if there was anything left on there that I still wanted and then blew it away (I’ll write a short post about removing Windows from the boot partition of a dual-boot system and setting up rdiff-backup another time).

The kids have been using Linux for years, so they’re happy penguins. I’m a happy penguin. The wife’s laptop is the only remaining Windows machine in the house and it is nearing the end of its life. I’m predicting we’ll be a Windows-free household in just a few months with absolutely no regrets.

Folks, it’s been a fun and sometimes woolly ride. Several times, early in this adventure, I had thoughts to just reboot into Windows and forget the whole thing ever happened. I mean, it’s not only hard to get used to a new way of doing things, it’s also a chore to have to transfer all of the stuff over that I want to work with and set everything up the way I like it. Years of Windows history is hard to shake.

But I stuck with it and I started to become proficient in the tasks I needed to do daily. With each success, my confidence grew. And as my confidence increased, I began to notice the nuances and subtle improvements that Ubuntu Linux makes over Windows.

It’s tough to switch. Period. You just need to give it some time. A few days is not enough. I’d say it takes three weeks minimum to switch. You aren’t giving Linux a fair chance if you give up earlier.

But it’s worth it.

In Part 1 I hinted that the more advanced you are as a computer user, the harder it would be to switch. So, what types of people are good candidates for switching?

People with modest computing requirements would be well served by Linux on their desktop. If you want to check your email, browse the internet, write and print personal documents, and download pictures from your camera onto your computer you bought in the last 2-3 years then you should have no problem at all switching to Linux. Ubuntu Linux comes configured out of the box to support all of these activities. If the desktop theme is setup in a particular way, it’s hard to even notice you’ve switched. Your first clue that you’re in a far, far better place might come when you realize you don’t have—and don’t need—any anti-virus software running.

If you want to do slightly more advanced things like watch videos on YouTube, listen to your mp3 collection, rip and burn CDs, chat with people on Skype or IM, do complex photo editing, create spreadsheets, write software, and manage your finances, you’ll still be well-served by Linux. You have to do some additional setup, mostly in the area of proprietary driver and codec (audio and video decoding) installation. Ubuntu 7.04 (code named “Feisty Fawn”) due out in April 2007 provides a simple control panel that will walk you through the process of installing just what you need without any hassles.

If you want to take it one step further and start creating your own content, editing multi-track audio, doing non-linear video editing, printing color-calibrated photos on your own printer, capturing video from a camera, or playing commercial video games, then you are going to run into problems. These problems are usually of the “there’s no driver” variety or its kin “there’s no GUI configuration tool so I have to edit .config files” or “it’s fairly easy but I have to search the Wiki and decipher 10 sets of conflicting instructions before I find the set that works for me”.

In some cases, you will simply not be able to use the software you are used to. There’s likely something that is very similar—maybe even better! (visit osalt.com right now!)—but whether it is a suitable replacement or not is a completely personal decision. For many people, The GIMP is a suitable replacement for Photoshop but for many others that’s a laughable suggestion. Then again, you may be pleasantly surprised by what you can run with Wine.

I also wrote that Linux isn’t just for geeks anymore. That is 100% true. I’d bet that anyone who says that hasn’t used Linux in a long time. But the cool thing is that a lot of geeks do use Linux. And by “geeks” I mean savvy, technology-loving, early-adopters. (And I count myself among their number.) Being in a community full of geeks is a wonderful thing. For example, if you have a gripe about something or wish you had an app to do some task, it’s a good bet that a lot of other people had the same itch; that a few of them had the time, energy, and know-how to do something about it; and that they contributed it back to the community so you can download exactly what you need, for free, with a few mouse clicks.

As you can tell by today’s date it’s actually been nearly eight weeks since I started using Ubuntu Linux. I wrote most of the content for these articles in late February and early March. But I can assure you now, with eight weeks of experience behind me, that if you stick with it that long you won’t want to switch back.

I just booted back into my old Windows XP system for a minute to see if I had any lingering switching pangs (it took too long and then it greeted me with a prompt to run the monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool—I don’t miss that at all). I don’t think my old Windows partition is long for this world. Rather than feeling comfortable, like getting your favorite leather jacket out of Winter storage, everything just seemed a little… off.

Windows had been my home for years, but I don’t live there anymore.

I’ve heard that installing software on Linux is very difficult. That may have been true once but it is a myth today. The truth is, installing software in Ubuntu is a far better and easier process that it has ever been in Windows.

The installation and updating of software is an area where Ubuntu shines. The Windows Add/Remove programs dialog is a feeble shadow of Apt, Ubuntu’s package management system. There are several different ways to install software in Ubuntu including a familiar sounding “Add/Remove” programs choice, a utility called Synaptic, and a command-line utility called apt-get; but under the covers they are all accessing Apt.

Apt manages a tremendous catalog of free software that has been packaged by official Ubuntu representatives and the Ubuntu community. There are over 20,000 applications available to me right now. I prefer using Synaptic to access the catalog which lets me browse and search software by category and description. To install anything I need requires just two clicks. One to select the software and one click to actually start the install. Once it’s installed, Ubuntu will automatically let me know if any of my installed software has been updated and offer to upgrade it for me. As if that wasn’t enough, I never have to reboot after I install anything!

Anything not in the official repositories that has any kind of popularity is quickly packaged by the community and made available. The end result is that if you need it, it’s in there. It’s an understatement to call this an amazing resource.

Apt combined with Synaptic is Ubuntu’s killer app.

I was already using a variety of free and open source applications when I installed Ubuntu. This probably made the switch easier for me since most of those applications were already available on Ubuntu. In other words, switching was easier because I was able to keep using the same apps. If you’re considering switching, switch apps first. Find free and open source applications that run on Linux and your current operating system. Open Source Alternative is the definitive resource for this information. You may be surprised by the quality of alternative software available (I was) in every category.

Applications I was using regularly (daily, in most cases):

Firefox, iTunes, Skype, Gaim, Adobe Lightroom, Paint Shop Pro X, GVIM, Subversion, Launchy, Last.fm, Apache 2, MySql, MySql Query browser, Audacity, Terminal Server Client

(I use Gmail and Google Calendar exclusively for mail and scheduling so those were non-issues.)

All of these applications also run on Linux except for iTunes, LightRoom, Paint Shop Pro, and Launchy. As I wrote earlier, this makes switching easier. Because I was already using a lot of free and open source software like Firefox, I could keep on using those apps on Linux.

I just needed to find replacements for Launchy, iTunes, Lightroom, and Paint Shop Pro. Replacing Launchy, a keyboard-based application launcher, was easy. A free app called Katapult performs exactly the same function.

iTunes was a bit more problematic. I don’t mind not being able to access the iTunes music store any longer as I didn’t buy a whole lot of music from them anyway. The real problem was being able to play the DRM-protected music files on my Ubuntu system that I had already purchased. Fortunately, I’ve always burned newly purchased iTunes tracks to a CD and re-ripped them in mp3 format. If you haven’t been doing this all along, you may have some work ahead of you.

But what app to replace iTunes as a music library and player? amaroK stands head and shoulders above every other music player I’ve tried, iTunes included. The amaroK guys say version 2.0 (due out this year) will run on Linux, Windows, and OS X. Whether you’ve switched or not, give it a try when that day comes.

Replacing Lightroom and Paint Shop Pro, key components of my digital photography workflow, have been my biggest hurdles. I’m a photographer. I care more about my photographs than the average snapshot shooter. I don’t typically get prints at Target and send them to grandma (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I’ve pressed the shutter on my Nikon nearly 50,000 times (no joke) since 2004. I’ve spent a couple thousand dollars on equipment. I mention all this not to brag but just to show how important photography is to me.

Adobe Lightroom is, frankly, magnificent. Lightroom is a joy to use and is brilliantly designed both aesthetically and functionally. Lightroom only runs on Windows and Macs. I haven’t found anything on Linux (or Windows!) that even comes close to it. There are apps on Linux that perform roughly the same function. digiKam, for example, is a very fine photo management and editing suite similar in capability and use to Google’s Picasa (which also runs on Linux). But, I don’t even think you can make a fair comparison between digiKam and Lightroom since the intended audiences are drastically different (Joe Snapshooter vs. Pro Photographer). Lightroom is in a different league.

Recognizing that nothing can truly replace Lightroom, I hunted around for usable alternatives and came across an app called LightZone. LightZone is a professional, commercial photo processing application created by a company called Light Crafts. LightZone runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux and retails for $249. But wait! They give away the Linux version for free! It’s a very nice photo processing app with some very useful and unique capabilities. It’s not as polished or quite as capable as Lightroom; but for me—for now—it’ll do nicely.

Which leaves Paint Shop Pro. The GIMP image editor is the de facto Linux standard for image editing. It is a shining example of the open source community’s ability to create complex and highly functional software. It is a technological marvel and includes almost everything you’d expect including stuff like pressure-sensitive tablet support. That said, the learning curve is a steep. Everything is there but it can take a while to get used to its… idiosyncracies. Everything, that is, with the exception of adjustment layers.

Ah, adjustment layers. If you don’t know what adjustment layers are, I’ll just say that switching to an app without them is kind of like giving up your dual-core PC for a Commodore 64. The GIMP may have adjustment layers in version 3. That’s a long way off.

There are other alternatives. You can actually run Photoshop 7 and maybe 8 (CS) under Linux via an emulation app called Wine. I haven’t tried it personally but many others have reported success. There’s also a very promising looking and modestly-priced ($38) commercial (shareware) application called Pixel (which I haven’t tried). If your needs are more modest, open source Krita, Picasa, or digiKam may suit you better.

For now, I’m using a combination of digiKam, LightZone, and GIMP. It took a lot of getting used to as these apps are significantly different from what I was accustomed to, but I’m finally becoming proficient with these new tools.

There are several “desktops” you can use with Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes with the Gnome desktop but you can easily install others. I’m currently using KDE and I think I prefer it over Gnome but I haven’t been a Linux user for very long. KDE is more Windows-like than Gnome is so Windows switchers might feel more comfortable with it.

KDE and Gnome each include a lot of “little” things that make working with your computer more civilized. For example:

• In Windows XP, you can download an app (Tweak UI) that lets you configure Windows not to steal focus from the current app. Instead, it will make the app that needs your attention blink in the taskbar. In Gnome, that is the default behavior; and it is much less intrusive with a very soft, gradual pulse instead of harsh blinking.
• You can copy and paste text simply by highlighting the text you want to copy and then clicking the mouse wheel where you want to paste it.
• In KDE, when I highlight a URL, a small popup appears in the corner of the screen asking me what I’d like to do with it (like open it in a browser).
• You can paste the contents of the clipboard directly to your desktop or folder. KDE prompts you for a filename and saves the contents in a new file for you automatically.

And there are hundreds of these kinds of things that, if you use a computer a lot, make a big difference in the long run.

In part four, the last article in this series, I’ll conclude with my overall impressions of Ubuntu and talk a little about the kinds of users Ubuntu might be best suited for.

[ Continue to Part 4: And the verdict is... ]