At last! I can stop suffering and write that screenplay!
I have finally, finally gotten my writing machine, the old Gateway Solo ((It may be old, and it may have been free to a good home, but darn I love this machine. Not only does it have character, it has the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever encountered on a laptop.)), to connect via wireless. ((This model does not have an ethernet port built in, so a wired connection would only have been more of a pain.)) I dumped ZenWalk Linux quite some time ago, and opted for Xubuntu.
I toyed with several other options (including Geubuntu OpenGEU), but ultimately the decision was made on two factors: First, I wanted the XFCE desktop/windowing environment, because I’m most familiar with it; and second, I wanted access to substantial software repositories, and the Ubuntu repositories are, so far as I can tell, the best (or at least the broadest).
And I’m happy. I only had to install one library to get Celtx running, I’ve got various other odds and ends installed (would someone explain to me, please, why so darn few Linux “desktop” distributions have no accounting software included as a standard?), and I’m online on it (woo hoo!).
It’s not paradise. Nothing with only 160 MB of memory is, alas. And Firefox is… pokey. But then, I’ve got a half-dozen add-ons installed ((but no Flash Player, it keeps freezing on install, for some reason)), so that might be the reason.
As for the rest of the system, I’ve been slowly customizing it to my tastes. My /home directory is on a separate partition from the root (took a tiny bit of research to recall how to get the system to recognize that); the two XFCE panels are merged into one, along the top of the screen (in Macintosh-like fashion); switched out the installed wireless software for something that plays a little nicer; got my password database running through KeePassX ((I’ve been using the Windows-based KeePass because I’ve been making use of the wonderful Portable Apps Suite on XP)); and on and on.
Hopefully, from here on out, I can just stick with Xubuntu and not need to do a new system that needs to be tweaked every X amount of time. We shall see.
