On my PowerBook, I don’t need any special PDF writer. It’s just a supported output format from the Printer routine. On Windows, I have—up until now—used Visage eXPert PDF. A few weeks ago, probably after a recent Windows upgrade on my wife’s (formerly my) XP Pro desktop, when ever I used the Visage print driver, it would work, but opened a very small window, which did not show the controls for saving to a file. So, I could print to PDF format, I could view the conversion, but I could then do nothing with the PDF. So, aside from loving my wife, why should I care?

I do use Windows XP to use QuickBooks, which I use to run my household and business finances. My wife uses it sometimes, as do I, Lately, I use it under VirtualPC on my PowerBook. But, I still need a way to create PDFs under Windows (I e-mail invoices this way). Since the Visage product, which has behaved flawlessly until a few weeks ago, stopped working, I looked for a replacement.

I found CutePDF™ Writer, whose tagline suggests. “Create PDF documents on the fly—for Free!” Those last two words attracted me. I installed it on both my PowerBook (under VirtualPC) and on her XP system. It works great, and I highly recommend it. It requires a PS2PDF converter, and they helpfully provide a download to the GNU Ghostscript converter.

It was a strange week. The first item that jumped out at me was the headline on The Register’s news item: Hawking: Leave Earth or die! At first, I thought someone was threatening him, but then I saw it was a warning from Hawking.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not packing just yet.

And this, from the Canada Free Press, in response to Al Gore’s version of Scary Movie, Scientists respond to Gore’s warnings of climate catastrophe. Short version: they did not say, “Good movie, Mr. Vice President.”

In October, 2003, I wrote about my experience with a $200 computer from Walmart and its Lycoris operating system, in A Linux Desktop. I recently started using my Fedora Core Linux 2.6 server with the Gnome desktop. And I am impressed. Here may be a desktop that “Mom + Pop” (™ Jon “maddog” Hall) can use.

It is difficult not to compare things to the predominant home computer desktop. Really, I must. The discussion is really about an alternate to Microsoft Windows. Does this match it for ease of use, etc.? I think so.

The Gnome desktop is clean with mouse and keyboard use similar to Windows. This is important for anyone thinking of a move, as well as the new user who has computer support from friends and family. There are familiar-looking “Computer,” “Trash,” and “your home” (which you can easily rename to “My documents”, and by “easily” I mean “exactly as you would in Windows”). There is a root window menu to launch a terminal window, which Mom+Pop would never do, create a folder, which they might, and create a Document, which they would do elsewhere.

A row at the top of the desktop gives access to drop-down menus, easy to explore. There is a text editor (Notepad replacement), gedit. (I am using it now to create this file), a bunch of games, tools (calculator, dictionary), graphics tools (like Gimp for photo editing and an image viewer), and PDF viewer. It comes with an X Window system version of Gaim (AOL IM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, and Jabber, all in one interface), Thunderbird for e-mail, and Firefox for browsing. Also, there’s video conferencing application, GnomeMeeting. Mom+Pop would have no use for Nmap, Ethereal, FTP, or IRC, but you might.

The whole OpenOffice set of applications is here. Mom+Pop will ever even notice they are not using their expensive, MS counterparts.

All the audio and video applications you might think of are here, except iTunes; Apple does not make an iTunes implementation for Linux.

For the power-user, you can set all system parameters, servers, and other system configuration tools.

Adding a printer just worked.

I’ve used the X Window System for years, and I’ve used Linux for years. I am closer to a power-user than Mom+Pop. But, I bet that this could be an excellent and un-Redmond-encumbered alternative to the usual, and more expensive, personal computer.

Another voice heard from. See the Slashdot report Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux?. The answer for one Dow Jones reporter was, “No, not really.”