[scribus] Moving to Linux

[mrdocs]

On Thursday 20 August 2009 20:34:56 D. R. Evans wrote:
> Steven Dayton said the following at 08/20/2009 01:30 PM :
> >> 1. Open a terminal (remember, in Linux, the command line is your friend
> >> -- evan if something can be done with a GUI, often it's easier, and
> >> certainly easier to describe, to do it from the command line).
> >
> > Maybe as long as you know what to do or what to key in. That is the one
> > thing I am struggling with the most with my Ubuntu machine.
>
> If you have at least a vague idea of what you're trying to do, then the
> "apropos" command can often help.
>
>   Doc


This thread exposes one of the glaring weaknesses of Ubuntu, as it is Gnome 
based:

*Font management - non existent for managing fonts sanely. We have long moved 
past the day in linux when it is needed to drop to the command line to mess 
with fonts. If you do need to that's a bug IMO.
* Some mediocre quality fonts installed by default.

There is a _far_ more elegant solution to all of this:

Install KDE 3.5 or 4.2+ - it is really that simple.

KDE for a long time has had the easiest and most user friendly font manager on 
the planet on any platform, Windows, OSX etc..  It is drag and drop simple, 
gives you a simple but usable preview of your installed fonts and even can 
generate .fontmap files that Ghostscript can use to make them available 
automatically.

But not Ubuntu's version. 

If you are new to Linux and want to try KDE I can confidently recommend using 
openSUSE, Mandriva or Fedora's KDE packages. I personally think openSUSE's 
version of KDE is better than anyone else's: They employ several core KDE 
developers full time just to work on KDE and accordingly have the deepest 
knowledge about KDE and QT, as well as devote more resources and QA testing to 
KDE/QT than anyone else. 

It is telling that none of the Scribus Team members with the exception of 
testing bugs, have ever run Ubuntu by choice. 

openSUSE and Debian proper have been and are the distros of choice.

Peter