A very small portion of you (Hey, Grandad) know that I’m not using Windows and haven’t been for quite a few months now. I’ve been using (gasp) a Linux Distro.
Yeah, that’s right, I pretty much ditched Windows and stayed on Linux for just about everything I do on my computer. In fact, I haven’t booted into Windows (7 RC) at all for the last 3 months except to throw some updates at it now and then (and to the anti-virus suite of course). There was just one fly in the ointment of Linux contentment for me…
No Windows Live Writer.
I simply don’t like the built in WordPress post editor, I always have. I actually felt sorry for bloggers using Mac OSX because they couldn’t use Windows Live Writer on their machines. They were stuck with using the WordPress editor or having to actually pay for one they could install locally. Now here I was in the same boat.
Of course, being the old geek that I am, I then learned all about installing an old copy of Windows XP Pro into a virtual machine but that’s another story altogether.
Then today, while looking at all the cool stuff that KDE 4.4 will bring to Linux table, I saw something called Blogilo (used to be called Bilbo Blogger until someone complained about a copyright infringement) that will be included in the default packages for 4.4. And since I just happen to be running a KDE flavored version of Linux Mint 8 (still in release candidate form, mind you) I checked to see if the package manager knew anything about a Bilbo that didn’t involve a rather small Hobbit.
It did and it wasn’t. So I installed it.
This is what it looks like:
It wouldn’t really be fair to compare this rather new KDE blogging client to Windows Live Writer since Blogilo just managed to reach version 1.0 recently while Windows Live Writer is a very mature product that first hit the scene sometime in 2006. It’s had more than enough time to add all the bells and whistles and get them working together smoothly including supporting WordPress powered sites directly. Hard thing to live up to.
For instance, I had to upload a larger image of the one above (sort of, I’m making this up as I go along) to Flickr and then link the image in the post to the larger one since Blogilo can’t generate it’s own thumbnails yet and…
Well, never mind all that.
Besides, this isn’t a review, that would be more appropriate for that other tech flavored blog that I never seem to post to. This is just an excuse to write up a post using the thing. In fact, I’ll have no idea if it will even post properly until it does. So without further adieu, I think I’ll just post what I got, check it out and come back and let you know what happened. Okay?
So here we go…
Edit: Well, that wasn’t so bad. I’m pleasantly surprised actually. It uploaded the image, the post and everything within a few seconds. It even added the link inside the image to the larger Flickr image. For this edit I merely corrected some minor grammatical errors and such. Oh, it has it’s quirks and unfinished bits here and there but for general blogging, it should work fine.
And as a bonus it does have the one thing I absolutely require in a blog writer…
A spel chckr!
Did someone call?
It looks kinda like Live Writer all right, but I would hate to lose the image processing side of things. I know this is probably a daft question, but have you tried Wine? I know some Windows applications run under that.
Grandad´s last blog ..iPad is not PC
Grandad – Yup, I tried Wine but Windows Live Writer requires IE and other associated Windows type bits in order to function properly that Wine couldn’t possibly emulate. There were Linux users tried.
So I actually installed VirtualBox and loaded it up with XP Pro just to run WLW. If I changed Distros I just hauled my “.VirtualBox” profile over to it. Saved me from reloading XP into VirtualBox all the time.
FYI: I write my posts beforehand, using Word, and then drop them into WordPress’s post editor. I still sometimes have to screw around with the HTML, but at least I don’t have to deal with the slowness of WP’s system.
But that’s no big deal. Really, this was just an excuse for a test comment — to go along with your test post.
Larry Wallberg´s last blog ..The State of the Union – for Non-Dummies
Larry – I used to do that myself back before Windows Live Writer came out. I even wrote a post about it but it’s somewhere lost in the dungeons of my blog. I don’t go down there anymore though–it scares me. And thank you for using my excuse to post for an excuse to comment. Any old excuse is good.