Some time in early 2008 Nick introduced me to Twitter.  I tried to to see the potential but I have to admit that for the first several weeks I kept thinking, “This is the dumbest thing to come along in a while.”  I seriously thought it sucked.  But it doesn’t.  What sucked at first was me.  I hadn’t fully embraced what was going on.  I wasn’t really following anybody and not many people were following me.  With so few people looking at what I was doing I never really felt compelled to tweet.  But now I have three different twitter accounts that represent three different facets of who I am.  I follow multiple different people and most of them follow me in return.  Now I tweet multiple times per day and check to see what others are doing on a regular basis.  I’m kind of addicted to it.  It’s another in a long line of time suckers but I love to search such things out and attach them like little leeches to my body.  Twitter, not that I’ve got my mojo working, is right up my alley.

Twitter is still fairly new so a client with which to tweet is not built into Fedora 10 (or I don’t know where it is).  That will change over time I suppose.  The Firefox add-on called TwitterFox is probably the easises way to get tweeting because Firefox is already installed and add-in installation is usually simple.  But for tonight I want either Twhirl or Spaz.  Both clients require AdobeAIR and I got that installed a little earlier this evening.  You can read about installing AdobeAIR by clicking here.  You can download twhirl here and you can download Spaz here.  When you download them using Firefox you will see a window like this:

Because AdobeAIR is installed you might think you can just open the download with AdobeAIR and start the install.  And you’d be right if you wanted the install to fail.  The AdobeAIR installer doesn’t seem to work unless it is running as root.  I haven’t done any research on why but it’s the solution I found multiple times on other sites.  I do know that I tried repeatedly to install using my user account and failed each time.

To successfully get twhirl (or spaz) installed, follow these steps:

Step 1 -Save the installation file to your computer.  I saved it to /home/colin/Download
Step 2 - Open a terminal window and su to root.
Step 3 - From the terminal window type “/usr/bin/Adobe AIR Application Installer” (with the quotes).  The GUI app will open.
Step 4 - Navigate using the tree-view to the directory where your installation file is located (the one you downloaded).
Step 5 - Select the installation package, click OK and the follow the install steps in the interface.

The twhirl install should place an icon under Applications > Accessories.  The spaz install should place a shortcut link directly under Applications.  You should now be good to go!  Send me a tweet to let me know how it goes.

Downloaded and installed Fedora 10 (64-bit).  Immediately set about setting up a Twitter client.  Chose one called Spaz at first.  In the end I found that I don’t like it as much as Twhirl, which is what I often use with Vista.  Both Spaz and Twhirl require Adobe AIR so I didn’t mess with either in the 64-bit version.  I ran into a brick wall with the whole 64-bit thing.  Installing AdobeAIR proved to be more trouble than it was worth.  AdobeAIR is only recently supported on Linux and 64-bit support is lacking.  Several workarounds are suggested on several different sites but I don’t want to play that game fresh out of the gate.  I run into the same crap with 64-bit versions of Windows, too.  RAW image thumbnail support in Vista comes to mind…  Anyway, I decided to bag 64-bit Fedora for now.  And so began install #2 of Fedora, 32-bit this time.  Doing a basic install of Fedora is just as mindless as installing Windows.  It might actually be easier.  Not needing anything particularly fancy I chose most of the default options along the way.  I’ll save customized installs for another time.

My second install of the day is now complete and my installation of AdobeAIR went exactly as it was supposed to this time.  No more 64-bit hangups.  The install process for AdobeAIR is simple but not because of anything Adobe does for you.  Getting it installed is kind of a speakeasy thing.  I had to do a few google searches to figure out exactly what to do.  And here are the steps for you:

Step 1 - Go to www.adobe.com and download AdobeAIR for Linux.  The file you will download is called AdobeAIRInstaller.bin.  It is an executable binary image but the permissions are not correct immediately after download.  That’s what steps 2 & 3 are for.
Step 2 - Open a terminal and su to root.  Navigate to the download directory for the user you are logged in as.  For me it was /home/colin/Download
Step 3 - From the terminal windows type chmod u+x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin.  Press enter.
Step 4 - From the terminal window (still as root) type ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin.  The installation process should begin.  In the installer window, follow the steps.

That’s it for getting AdobeAIR installed.  Next up:  Installing Spaz and/or Twhirl.

I have been using Linux for years.  And I hate it.  No.  Wait.  I love it!  Well, it depends on the day, actually.  I’m so torn.  Like so many others things in life, some days are better than others.  It’s been in the back of my head for more than a few years that I have always been a very specialized user of Linux.  It breaks down like this: when I want to use some cool tool or utility that doesn’t exist for Windows, I boot up a Linux distro and do what it is I want to do.  When I’m done I return to Windows.  I have been dual-booting for a long time and I’d say about 95% of my time is spent with Windows running.  The rise of ultra-cool bootable distros like Backtrack3 have eliminated the need for me to even run a dual boot system.  Because I have multiple computers I have found myself running Windows exclusively and using a bootable DVD with Backtrack on it when I need some ‘nix.

Even though I have tried more than once to use Linux as a desktop OS I always seem to fizzle out after a day or so and go back to Windows.  The reason for my failure may be in multiple parts.

1. I know Windows really well.  I know where everything is and I know how to do most anything I want.  It’s a comfortable place for me so I tend to gravitate toward it.
2. A lot of what I do was originally created on Windows.  Day-to-day work puts me face-to-face with Powerpoint, Excel, Access, ACT! and Quickbooks.  I know how to use them and they are largely bullet-proof (ACT! kinda sucks, though).  Microsoft Office products have been developed for years and the version I use (Office 2007) is feature rich.  Every time I have tried to use OpenOffice Impress in the past I have gotten frustrated within minutes and switched back to PowerPoint.
3. The Linux GUI is a little clunky compared to Windows.  But I’m not 100% sure if it’s clunky or if it’s just different from Windows.  I wonder if I’m not a victim of my Windows familiarity again.  Linux die-hards will shrug at this because they do everything from the command line.  Why run X?  It just uses resources, right?
4. I have to admit that I don’t know the where everything is in Linux.  I often search for things in the GUI but I really get lost trying to find things in the file system.  In Windows I know where the files (and registry settings) are located and how to modify them.  With Linux, this isn’t always the case for me.  I find myself searching Google to learn where a setting is stored.  While it’s cool to learn new things it gets annoying when you’re just trying to get some work done.
5. Linux is not nearly as “plug and play” as Windows.  At least not in my experience.  It has made leaps and bounds in recent years but I always seem to have fewer problems getting hardware to work with Windows.
6. I connect to a lot of resources on Windows computers.  Accessing the Windows files using CIFS (SMB) is totally do-able with Linux but it isn’t as seamless as it is with Windows to Windows connections.
7. A biggie:  Outlook Web Access.  OWA SUCKS on any browser other than IE.  Firefox on Windows and LInux give a functional yet very ugly OWA experience (IETab for Windows Firefox rocks the house!!!)  Because I move from computer to computer so much I’m not much into POP3-ing my mail.  I like OWA.  The intense level of suckiness of OWA on Linux has actually kept me away for years.

I say all of this because today I am going to begin a Windows hunger strike.  I am going to try and use Linux exclusively as my desktop OS.  In order to keep myself going I will be telling you how it’s going.  I hope to report daily (perhaps multiple times each day) but we’ll see how it goes.

Other than formulating my own opinion on whether Linux is really viable on the desktop I don’t have any real agenda.  I am one of what seems to be a minority of people who loves Vista.  Once you get a PC or notebook that is beefy enough to handle it, that is.

So here it begins.  I actually wrote this post on a laptop with a fresh install of Fedora Core 9.  I went back and forth when deciding which distro to use.  I initially wanted to use Ubuntu but decided on Fedora because it seems to be more common and have better support.  I may be wrong on that point.  I’m about to find out for sure.  If this goes well I’ll consider giving SuSe and Mandriva a look.  We’ll see.

Wish me luck…

Colin Weaver