Drivel

I’ve heard about Drivel through friends who have been using LiveJournal and they use Drivel as their blogging client. It’s a really awesome client for LiveJournal because you could really choose which user icon to use, as well as select your privacy filter. Your custom filters are actually reflected in the choices. Aside from that you could choose which blog you’d be posting to. It could be that you’re writing for your community’s blog.

However, there is still something lacking in Drivel when it comes to WordPress. You could not input tags to your blog entry. It’s just that it’s so easy to select your blog right away when you launch the application. The thing is that it makes you choose which blog you’d be writing for from the beginning. I think this might be because different blogging platforms have different options, etc.

Tomboy

First and foremost it’s a sticky note application for the desktop. It’s very easy to take notes with it as well include some formatting of your text immediately. But because it’s primarily a sticky notes application, you cannot retrieve your recent blog entries. And you could just selectively post whichever note into your blog after you’ve written it.

Then again, it’s not made to be a blogging client. This is why I could not really use it as a primary blogging client.

BloGtk

This blogging client, so far, is the nicest one for WordPress. I read somewhere that you could also use it to post on LiveJournal but I doubt that it will be as awesome as Drivel. It might not have a rich text editor but it does have buttons that could help you with mark-up. You could even post blog entries with tags in its advanced tab. Also, you could preview your blog entry just to make sure that it will look the way you want it to be.

So at the end of the day, I really am going with BloGtk. It is the niftiest one that I could use with WordPress. As much as I use LiveJournal, I post to my WordPress blogs more. If you’ve got other blogging clients to recommend, I’d be more than happy to try them out.

Post from: New Linux User

Why am I searching for a good blogging client?

It’s simple really. I want to write my blog posts offline, and without distractions on the internet. If I have my browser open, I tend to just read on and on and I can’t stop myself so I end up clicking too many links and too many tabs and before I know it I haven’t written the blog entry I was originally thinking of. Sometimes I even forget what in the world the topic is!

I like it that Drivel and Tomboy can both post to WordPress and Livejournal blogs. But what I really am having difficulty with is posting with tags. Those things which add more clue as to what the blog entry is all about. Actually, in Tomboy there is none of that and in Drivel, I am limited to selecting only one category.

So how now?

I am not sure. BloGTK is giving me pains as I try to use it so I’d have to keep on searching for a good blogging client. What are you using? Maybe what you’re using is better than mine. Could you share with me what your blogging client is?  It would be great if it could let me update tags on blog entries.

Post from: New Linux User

For me, Docker seems quick to load, light and simple. I like using Docker because it also acts like a system tray for me, especially because I want to see if my Dropbox is getting updated, what apps I am running that have icons on the tray. At the very least I am clued in.

The Berkeley LUG even listed down what they think are the best docks for Linux out there. They listed the following:

• Avant Window Navigator – This dock has a lot of plugins and it is configurable. I haven’t really been using this because my computer’s graphics card seemed to have issues with this dock.
• Kiba Dock – This dock seems to keep having reviews about how awesome the graphics is. I’ve never tried it so I think that’s a hint.
• Cairo Dock was with me for a short while but I was not comfortable with having a dock that has too many things on it. The fancy effects of hovering over the icons got a little too corny for me after a couple of days. But it’s true that it’s nifty in the sense that it has the list of apps I am using and those that I could easily run.
• Docky – This is Gnome-Do’s optional interface. So imagine Gnome-Do as a search bar and launcher. This would be something interesting to use and I haven’t tried it yet. Could this meet all my search and docking needs? I would suppose. However, I do encounter some problems with Gnome-Do crashing suddenly crashing sometimes.

What’s your take on this topic?

Post from: New Linux User

In any case, using Linux does have its pros and cons. The thing is, I think it boils down to personal choice and preferences. What might be pros and cons for me may not apply to you. If I don’t need Photoshop for my image manipulation tasks, then for me it’s one thing I don’t consider in terms of the usability of Linux. However, some of you might think of it as an essential application. And there might be others who are very familiar with Photoshop that using another application is unthinkable.

Maybe some Windows users don’t see the relevance of Linux because they are already too used to it and the applications that they run on it daily. And maybe some of us who are used to Linux cannot see the perspective other users might have so we could say that it is ready for the desktop — but we don’t really say what kind of desktop usage.

Convincing people is not an easy task. We can argue all we want but for people to really know what Linux is about and if it is indeed something they could already use, they have to experience it and decide for themselves. If they give up easily, it’s their choice. I guess that in my experience the people who decide to stick with using Linux have their reasons. But the most of important thing is that they saw how Linux and free/open source software meet their needs. No amount of arguments could dissuade them from believing in Linux because they have really felt its relevance.

Post from: New Linux User

It’s probably something cool or something alien to new Linux users: the separation of the operating system with the desktop. You might be thinking, sure, I could have a new look if I install StyleXP or LiteStep on Windows. But the thing is that it’s not quite the same. I used to think it was so cool that I could do that on Windows. It made my desktop distinct from the rest of my co-workers’. But it was at a cost. Litestep was running on top of Windows and it was heavy on my resources.

On Linux desktops, you can choose your desktop environment or window manager. It could be something resource-heavy like the full-blown environments like GNOME and KDE, or it could be as lightweight and minimalist as FVWM or Ratpoison. You could also get something not too minimalist but still relatively lightweight like Openbox or Fluxbox.

It’s the power of choice when it comes to your desktops. You could customize the look of each desktop environment and/or window manager to your heart’s delight. However, the cost is more related to the time you’d spend on learning the intricacies of each aspect of the desktop environment.

For new Linux users, most distros have GNOME or KDE installed by default. But I also recommend you to check out the following:

• Openbox
• FVWM
• WindowMaker

They would look very different but they are worth checking out, especially for those who are on older computers.

Post from: New Linux User

Plasma is KDE’s way of making the ‘desktop’ a better user experience by letting users decide what ’shape’ it is. I think that KDE wants to empower its users by making the panel, the desktop and other components customizable in so many ways and yet make them work together seamlessly. The concept is quite different from the usual desktop because you will have plasmoids and stuff which you can tweak so that they will behave according to what you prefer.

Some people say that FOSS apps are not usable and I think that projects like this one moves progressively. They don’t want to make apps that work, they want to let users have a better experience in interacting with the app and get their tasks done. I may not be a big KDE fan but this move is way cool, if you ask me.

Post from: New Linux User