program alternatives

well, in my search for a linux replacement for Dreamweaver (if ya know of one, please let me know!) I came across a couple of great resources. One is this page which lists linux/open source alternatives to popular windows programs. This is an awesome way to see what is out there, and the list seems to be pretty up to date.

and I also found this, which is a great guide to getting things started and up and running on Ubuntu Feisty. I don't think I've linked to this before, but I wanted to make sure I had it on here.

Linux Web Page Editor

Just installed a webpage editor. I've been looking for one to replace Dreamweaver 2 with, because that's what I'm using presently to edit my website. This article recommended Quanta. It suggested using the "sudo apt-get install" command to install it, which I did. But when I opened Quanta, it said it was missing these applications: Kompare, KXSLDbg, KImageMapEditor, and Cervisia. I used the synaptic package manager to find the applications and install them. For others trying the program, I'd suggest using the synaptic package manager from the get-go, because it typically detects all the dependent applications and suggests them for installation as well.

Hopefully soon I'll have the time to really try out Quanta and I'll post my thoughts on it here. I just wanted to get down how I had installed it while I was thinking about it.

Office 2000 take 2 and finally sound for music...

Yeah, so I completely screwed up my Wine Office 2000 installation by trying to install Dreamweaver 2 through Wine. I found some crazy post on the ubuntu forums which had me copying whole Windows system folders from my XP installation to my Linux one...which (surprise, surprise!) killed my ability to use Office 2000 through wine. Brilliant, I am, brilliant.

I finally fixed everything by completely uninstalling wine, eSword, the internet explorer dealio which was recommended by the guide I used to install Office 2000, and the dreameweaver attmept I had made. After that, as well as another update to the wine program, I redid everything (up to Dreamweaver) and now Office 2000 works like a charm!

I also figured out a little bit of my sound problem. The issue was that I was hearing the ubuntu login sound whenever I started up my computer, but then could get no sound out of any of the media players (music or DVD). I found the sound settings and played around with them for a bit. I about scared myself out of my pants with the test tone when I got it right - didn't realize my volume was that loud...

So I can now play music - but still no sound for DVDs, no matter which player I use. I'm hoping it's not a codec setting or something. But when I do the test sound in the ubuntu sound settings menu, I get the tone for the 'movies' category, but when I'm playing a movie, no sound. I'll let ya know when I figure this one out.

Also...last but not least....fun with my printer. I thought ubuntu had automatically installed my printer when I installed the OS, but it hadn't. So after a couple of impatiently unsuccessful attempts, I decided to have a little patience with the detection program and it finally found the printer and installed it. I haven't tried to print anything yet...but here's to it working correctly!