Like the Transformers ones I pointed out the other week. Or these ones shaped like bombs (yes — but cartoon, round-ball bombs, not IEDs). Or any number of cute, toy-like USB drives which, can I point out, usually have lower capacity and a higher price. Like I said, they are the keychain toys of the new millennium.

There has to be a point at which the lack of storage space makes cute USB drives too useless ot bother with. The penguin one has added functionality and supports a good cause. Most cute drives don’t even offer those benefits. (Plus, I think I paid $20 for the last 16GB drive I bought and it was very simple to turn it into a bootable drive and install Linux distros from it.)

I can’t tell if I’m just being cranky and middle-aged or if this really is as silly as I see it. You decide!

I’ve steadfastly resisted the temptation to buy an external DVD drive for my netbook mainly because of the research I did for that piece. I haven’t had trouble installing any program I have on disc and in the past few months I’ve installed various Linux distros from USB drives (over and over and…).

It’s very odd to me that, when I was in college, having a CD-ROM drive was a big deal, then it was a big deal if you could get a DVD drive included, and then came the wonders of writable DVD drives which seemed so fancy and awesome. Now we’re back to having computers with no optical drive. But considering how you can download almost anything you need from media to software, it isn’t such a big deal any more.

I try not to feel old when I think of things like this…

Anyway, go buy Laptop Magazine. It’s a great issue even beyond my small contributions. 31 free apps that don’t suck! And more.

However, I feel that these blissful days are a long way away.  Because even though programs like the OpenOffice suite and GIMP emulate the non-free programs in broadstrokes, it’s always some small, seemingly marginal function that’s missing or doesn’t work as well that puts me right off.  I find myself even angrier, because I want to shake the open source community and scream “Why do you tempt me with a brave new world and then smack me in the face?!”

For example: OpenOffice Writer.  In many ways the parallel of MS Word.  I can create and format documents just the same in both programs as far as I know.  When I’m doing basic to intermediate tasks, Writer serves me well.

But then.

I want to do something that is really easy to do in MS Word: find paragraph marks and replace them with two sequential paragraph marks, thereby inserting a line between every paragraph. This is especially useful when posting things to blogging software. In plain text mode, two line breaks means insert a p tag.

In MS Word, it’s very easy and quick to do this.  You click Find & Replace and, if you don’t know the code for “paragraph mark” by heart (it’s ^p) then you click More>> and you’ll see a dropdown for special characters — paragraph marks, tabs, em dashes, a whole long list.  If you want to insert two breaks, you put ^p in find and ^p^p in replace. Simple, easy.

Not so with OpenOffice.  Not only is there no helpful dropdown in the Find & Replace window, the method for doing the operation I described above is completely counter-intuitive and flawed. After over an hour searching I was able to learn a bit about Regular Expressions and how they applied to the Find & Replace process. In order to get something approximating the simple process of finding one paragraph break and replacing it with two, I had to look through 7 web pages and I still did not find a method that produced completely satisfactory results.

And forget about doing my other oft-used Find & Replace maneuver: find all text formatted a certain way (ex: italicized) and put certain text or characters on either side of said formatted text (like HTML code). This is another fairly simple process in MS Word. I spent 3 hours trying to find a way to do this in OpenOffice one day. I gave up.

Another aspect of OpenOffice that bugs a lot of users (though not so much me) is the inability to have a “normal” page view. Not the Print Layout or the Web Layout, just straight text all the way down with a little dotted line indicating the page break. MS Word has this and OpenOffice users have been clamoring for it since 2001, apparently. And yet there is no satisfaction. Sad.

This kind of thing means that I can never use OpenOffice as my primary office suite. I will continue to need Word. I don’t want to need Word! And  I should not need to take a course in programming in order to do really simple tasks.

I could spend another 1000 words talking about the problems I have with GIMP over Photoshop or even Paint Shop Pro 6. I feel like every intermediate or advanced function of GIMP takes more steps or requires more hunting than is necessary for an image program. And having the tool menu in a separate window from the window with the image is maddening. Every time I have to use GIMP to do something as simple as crop then resize an image my blood pressure rises.

Take those frustrations with individual programs and apply them to a whole operating system – yeah, I’m looking at you, Linux. As Laptop Magazine commenter Gary Reaves so elegantly put it:

How would you like to own a toaster that requires you to design a timing circuit switch every time you want a piece of toast? Try marketing that to consumers. That’s basically what Linux Distros are all about…

Most problems don’t quite reach the timing circuit design level of complication. Still, any time a simple function or feature isn’t there or requires a lot of work and research to do, users are going to be unhappy. Heck, even non-free/open source software and operating systems run into this problem. Windows Vista, anyone? How about Office 2007? (That travesty of an office suite has kept me using Office XP for almost a decade now.) But Microsoft is the dominant force here. They can afford to pull crap like this (somewhat).

If open source software wants to play with the big boys, the programmers need to step up their game. It’s not the broad strokes of functionality that are going to make or break you with consumers, it’s the little things.

Linux Mint earned the Editor’s Choice, as well it should, as it was my favorite of the five.  Ubuntu was a close second. As I mentioned before, I am not partial to PCLinuxOS or Mandriva, and Fedora makes me want to never see Linux again. (This is especially sad because Fedora is the one that works best with the Samsung netbooks.)

Click on over to read. Maybe you will find yourself thinking about trying Linux. I am glad I did, despite everything.

I don’t think I’m all that different from most informed computer users. I use this funny box to do more than just check email and process words. My computer is central to my livelihood. And yet Linux held no temptation for me.

Then I got an Eee PC.

When I heard that Eee PCs came with Linux on them (a tweaked version of Xandros, as we all now know) I wasn’t put off. I was actually happy to hear it, because I figured not having Windows helped keep the cost down. After I bought it, I used that little netbook every day for months. In that case, I did mainly use it for surfing and writing and not much else. Still, Linux didn’t make things more difficult, trip me up, or otherwise annoy me. I actually enjoyed it. Plus, I will admit, it made me feel like an ubergeek, which is a good feeling.

When I interviewed for my current job I even said that I thought Linux was pretty awesome and would be willing to try it elsewhere. My boss hasn’t let me forget that yet. Especially in light of the last 5 weeks.

A few of you are aware of this (mainly because of my ranting), but I had to review 5 Linux distros in the past 5 weeks. I got to choose them, and I went with distros that I’d heard of and that had a reputation for being newbie friendly. Ubuntu (of course), Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, Fedora and Mandriva. In order to review them, I installed, used, added to, configured, and poked at all five. I actually installed each of them more than once — some 3 times. I mostly tested them on different computers from LiveUSBs, but one of the sections in my reviews is all about installation and whether it’s easy for Linux newbies like myself.

And again, I’ll point out that I’m not a newbie or clueless computer user. I’m pretty savvy. Still, every version of Linux I installed made me curse out loud and break things. Ubuntu and Mint were, I admit, the easiest. But even then I was lost a lot when dealing with the partitioner. Fedora is the worst, then PCLinuxOS, then Mandriva. Fedora made me want to shoot myself. Repeatedly.

Granted, I was having troubles because I was attempting to install these Linuxes alongside existing operating systems (dual-boot) and thus had to deal with partitioning, which Ubuntu and Mint make fairly easy. If I just wanted to wipe out everything on the disk and do a clean install it wouldn’t have been so fraught with the other three. But I’m sure a lot of people would like to try Linux for a while to make sure that they can switch over successfully. Not everyone wants to ditch Windows or Apple forever and right away.

Even distros that claim to be friendly for new users and easy and such do not even have something as simple as on-screen help. I don’t understand the mentality here. Or, I do understand a bit of the mentality, but I think it’s kind of dumb.

Anyway, the reviews are all written so I don’t have to live and breathe Linux anymore. I’m probably going to end up reviewing other distros as time goes on and updating my reviews as new versions come out. (I may refuse to do Fedora, though.) I also pitched an idea to the editor concerning Linux software which I’ll probably end up doing for the website, if not for print.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m going to buy a new netbook soon (a Samsung, yay). It’ll probably only come with a choice of XP and… XP. Will I dual-boot with Linux? Actually, yes, most likely. I’ll probably end up putting Mint on it alongside Windows. My netbook needs are simple: access the internet, get my email, allow me to write and edit my files. Obviously I can do all of that with any Linux, but Mint is the only one I have any affection for. Perhaps it’s the color scheme. I can see myself ending up like this someday:

In a few years I may have left Windows behind completely. It all depends on how the first installment of my proposed software article comes out. I’m going to try and replicate all of the tools I use for web design in Linux. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Perhaps I’m being a bit curmudgeonly.  I use my netbook to get work done, so I need it… working.  But for developers, figuring out how to port things to different platforms and hardware is work.  Still, I always look at news of this type with a bit of skepticism.

Yesterday Brad Linder (of Liliputing) and Adam McDaniel put up instructions on how to create a LiveUSB of the HP Mi Edition version of Linux (which is basically Ubuntu with some semi-extensive tweaks).  This is big news for anyone interested in the Mi OS because up until now you could download it but the install would overwrite everything on your hard drive.  Most Linuxes have the ability to make LiveCDs or LiveUSBs so you can try a distro out and, as far as I know, all of them can install alongside an existing OS (in theory).  But I don’t know if HP expected there to be this kind of interest in the Mi Linux.

Anyway, Brad and Adam spent some time figuring out how to tweak things, so now anyone with a lot of time who isn’t turned off by using Terminal can spend an hour making a LiveUSB of this (admittedly sleek) OS.  Does this fall into Because You Can?  Maybe not.  After all, the OS is usable and meant to run on a netbook.  On the other hand: look at all this tech speak!

I’ve already been promised that I don’t have to do it.

I also installed the PortableApps platform on an SD card I had in my Eee PC (before I gave it to my niece for Christmas). PortableApps is amazing — lots of great, useful software on an SD card that, again, retains settings and information and leaves no trace behind on the computer you’re using. It’s great for security and supremely useful for me since I test a lot of netbooks and notebooks and don’t want to always install the same core programs over and over.

PortableApps utilizes all open source software, so there are many things I’m not entirely familiar with. But I’m taking it as an opportunity to learn about what’s out there. Of course I know all about Firefox and Thunderbird (which, by the way, everyone should be using instead of MS Office) and Open Office. I’m trying to evaluate whether KompoZer is an adequate substitute for Dreamweaver. GIMP isn’t adequate for anything, alas. There is a dearth of open source photo editing stuff. Someone please correct this!

Anyway, I’m getting very much into my portable OS and apps. Maybe, maybe, maybe it will facilitate my eventual switch to Linux, but I’m extremely dubious about that at this point. Mainly because I’ve had to deal with installing, configuring, and testing five distros in the past month and none of them have been easy or without problems. But that’s a post for another day.