Monthly Archives: August 2012

Finally, a simple word processor. I have found that over the years, I type less and less for my blog, and for enjoyment in general. Why is this? Well, for one, I really do think there are just too many distractions for doing some real writing. Even trying to type a watch review was a real chore. So, I went looking for something simpler, cleaner, and with less distractions. What I found was FocusWriter. It is available for Windows, Mac, and of course, Linux. What it is gives you is just what you see in the screen shot. A blank page to write on. You can import or create your own themes. Another neat feature is the fact you can set goals for yourself. Number of words, minutes of typing, etc. It is full screen, so no e-mail notifications, or instant messengers. I even have it set up to sound like an old typewriter, which this really reminds me of. When I was a kid, that is all you had to make professional looking documents. Computers and word-processors did not arrive on the scene until the mid 80’s. The program I learned to word process on was WordPerfect for DOS. It was a simple interface as well. No buttons, doodads , and almost distraction free.

This is WordPerfect for DOS:

This is OpenOffice Writer 3.4:

This is FocusWriter:

See the difference? For a little fun, I created a theme very reminiscent of WordPerfect for DOS.

However, what I usually use is this:

It is the classic green characters on a very dark screen, much easier on the eyes than a bright, wight screen, with dark letters.
Give it a try, you may like it.  It is even available for Windows and Mac.

For many, many years I was a Mandriva Linux user.  In fact, I started back in 1999, with Mandrake (former name) 6.0, which I purchased, in box form, from Microcenter.  This was after a really revealing hack on my Windows 98 machine.  Since then, I have never looked back.  I dual booted between the two for a while, but after 2002 or so, I made the complete switch.  For the last 13 years I stuck with Mandrake, then Mandriva Linux for my main computer until about 3 weeks ago.  The transition away from Mandriva started on our netbook.

About six months ago, I got fed up with the performance of Mandriva 2011 on my netbook, so I tried something different, Ubuntu 10.04,  For the beginning, it was a much better match to the hardware.  Everything worked with minimal muss and fuss.  The Lenovo S10 never ran better.  Battery life was not great, but acceptable.  Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and my desktop machine just stopped working.  I was running Mandriva 2011, which is now a KDE only desktop system.  I had a lot of quirks, had to compile the nVidia driver myself, and it just was always on the cusp of crashing.  Not something you want on your main computer.  I had a combination of hardware failure, something on the motherboard, and a corrupt home partition.  I figured, screw it, I really like Ubuntu on the netbook, how about I try it on my main machine?

I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised.  Everything worked out of the box, including the nVidia proprietary drivers.  Unlike the ailing Mandriva, Ubuntu has a very healthy support community, and they support their LTS (Long Term Support) installations for FIVE years.  Pretty impressive for free.  I opted for the Unity (gnome based) desktop environment.  I have seen complaints about it being too cell phone like, but, to be honest, it is nice having a unified interface between my phone, netbook, and desktop computer.  It is simple and quick to use, even for an old salt like me.  The package management system, and how many packages are available, are outstanding.

Looking back now, I don’t know why I put up with the poorly supported and infrequently updated Mandriva.  I wish them nothing but the best, but I see why Ubuntu is the most popular.  Heck, even Suse is much better supported.  I have found it compares very favorably compared to Windows 7, and is much more polished and modern than Windows XP.