In which I geek out...

If I say that I use Linux, I believe that I've reduced my targeted readership (meaning poets who don't use either Windows or Mac) to, um, about 1. You don't meet many Linux users at all, even when it comes to the dead-simple Linux Mint, which is my poison of choice. You meet even fewer poets/writers who want to deal with managing their operating system. They love Apple products, which "just work," leaving them to concentrate on the writing itself. I like to tinker, both with my poetry and my computer. I like having some clue about the plumbing and wiring in my house, even if I have to call an expert to fix major problems. I like to do some gardening, even if I buy most of my produce at the store (though we did sign up for a local CSA beginning this summer). One of these days, with proper ventilation, I hope to make some of my own furniture. This is not to say I'm a programmer of any sort. Rather, if you're the sort who has one thing you tinker with excessively (poetry) and are interested in controlling a few more aspects of your computer (for free), Linux Mint might be the way to go.

What follows are four screenshots with various features. Not so much a review as a view.


Wide-open view just to establish a few things. My old monitor crapped out on me. Got a new one, 20" Asus, for $120 and free shipping from NewEgg. The screen real estate is pleasant. On the lefthand side is a chat client called Pidgin. I have it set up so that I can chat to people signed into either GMail or Facebook - each chat will appear in its own window, but you can have one tabbed window if you want. That's Firefox for my web browser - the default in Linux Mint. Both of these programs come loaded right away. That's a good thing. A very cool addition that I don't recommend to new users is in the upper right. You see the clock and date? OK, that's normal. You can sync your calendar so that by clicking on the clock, a drop down month appears with the day's events. Unfortunately, you can't get a list view. I like the list, and have been talking with a great guy in Austria named Florian Dorn. His gnome-agenda program/applet gives me that list, which you see in the screenshot. It isn't actually all that tough to install, but let yourself become a bit familiar with your desktop before trying to install it. I'll happily help out if you're interested.


This screenshot will look vaguely familiar if you've been reading lately. I really like this desktop wallpaper. Incidentally, if anybody wants to know where to get any of the themes I'm showing off here (be it wallpaper, cursor image, or window borders), just ask in the comments. Two new geekeries here. One is Mail Notification. When I get a new message in GMail, even if I don't have Firefox open, a note pops up in the corner of the screen with basic information - sender, subject line, time. If I mouse over the icon, that large list appears of my 10 latest unread emails. In the upper left, my music player, Exaile, embeds the cover art for the album I'm listening to on the desktop. By embed, I mean I could put an icon or a window or whatever over it. Exaile does not come with Linux Mint by default. If you decide to take the plunge, though, it'll take all of five minutes (or less) to install.


This is what the Ubuntu wallpaper should have been. Final Exaile note - every time a song changes, I get a semitransparent popup with the song info. This info also appears if I mouse over the Exaile icon in the taskbar in the upper right.


Since I've written about composition a lot, here's my new composition setup. Yes, Pidgin is still open. Yes, Firefox is still open. But I keep everything off the desktop except my dissertation. I'm using a program called the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), which is horribly named, a little more awkward to use than Photoshop, but totally free. Linux Mint comes with this installed. Reason #1 to use GIMP: it's free. Reason #2: There are legal issues surrounding dissertations. If you create one using, ahem, borrowed software, you get in trouble. I'm doing my dissertation in absentia, away from campus, away from free access to Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. I'm not going to fork over $600 for the program(s) that will best let me write this thing. That was one of the major reasons for starting the switch to Linux about a year ago - preparation for a time when I might need it.

I've gotten used to most things in Linux. There are two major bothers, at least with this distribution*. One, Adobe Flash is often wonky. I wanted to look at John Gallaher's Guidebook today, but it won't load properly. YouTube is fine, though sometimes I get a big gray rectangle with sound instead of whatever video should load. IGN.com is fine today as well. But John's e-chapbook? I've got nothing. Two, my iPod Touch. This is squarely on Apple's shoulders, actually. I can sync Kate's iPod Nano using any number of programs in Linux. There are two music players I highly recommend, and a good four or five others that would serve you just fine. But the encryption on the iPhone and iPod Touch is different, and I can't sync unless I boot back into Windows to use iTunes. There are ways around this, but they're very, very ugly. Besides that, I'm pretty happy with the switch.

Your thoughts? Too geeky? As if being a poet wasn't pigeonholed enough?

*Linux comes in a number of "flavors" referred to as distributions. One of the most popular is Ubuntu. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, but has certain codices (read: what allows you to play an mp3 or DVD) already installed. Ubuntu lets you get the codices, but doesn't come with them pre-installed for practical and ideological reasons. There are many other (valid) distributions. Visit DistroWatch.com and poke around for a while if you want to see the variety. I'm not saying Linux Mint is the hands-down best of these. I am saying that for someone who likes to tinker but A) wants to / has to concentrate on something else and B) is OS-pagan but not precisely computer-literate, this is the way to go.

EDIT: On April 2, fixed Florian's nationality from German to Austrian. Sorry about that, Florian!