I’m writing this post with Windows Live Writer. I hate to say this, but it’s by far the best blogging tool I’ve used. I’ve been on the blogging scene in one form or the other since 2004 (if you count my manually written reverse-chronological personal website, since 1999). I started out with w.bloggar, a simple non-WYSIWYG tool and then gradually worked my way up to Performancing for Firefox, a WYSIWYG addon, which I used quite religiously until today.
Pros: You can edit in a web layout that mimics your blog’s stylesheet superbly (at least it does so for WordPress blogs). And the post preview is incredible — it generates a preview that is almost identical to what the post would actually look like on your blog. With this thing, writing a blog post feels much the same as writing on a word document. The interface is visually pleasing and operation is smooth — you can simply concentrate on your content.
Big Pro: It automatically uses the WordPress API to upload images!
Cons: Well, I really can’t think of any at the moment. Underlining of misspelled worlds would be nice. Posting is slightly slower than Performancing, but who minds a few extra seconds.
Ubuntu at Home
And in other news, I installed Ubuntu on my home PC, alongside Windows. It installed even more effortlessly than Windows. It’s a bit sluggish (you have to hand it to Microsoft — sometimes we take for granted how smoothly their apps run), but overall I can do with Ubuntu at home, everything I do with Windows. Almost all my Office documents open without a problem in OpenOffice 2.0. I’ve yet to take n#’s advice on installing Wine. I know you Ubuntu veterans must be laughing at me now, but it’s been a long time since I’ve done something adventurous with my home PC. Anyway this is not meant to be real post — I’m just trying out Live Writer.
There’s a slightly unfortunate typo of Ubuntu, on your title no less
Sluggish? Are you sure you’re running the 686 kernel series instead of the default 386? That makes a massive difference (the 686 series is optimized to take advantage of the instruction sets in every thing after PIIs) and it’s usually the thing most people new to Ubuntu don’t do.
Linux and X in general is faster for me on machines, compared to Windows. I’m not hating on Windows though, it works for me.
w.bloggar is cheating a bit
After 2.0, WordPress keeps drafts in hidden URLs. These hidden URLs are accessible to anyone who knows the post id 
They’re just pulling the draft preview from the site into their own pane 
eeek! i find-and-replaced all the misspellings on the text. i missed the title! well, i’d rather misspell as “ubantu”, rather than mispronounce as “uboontu” (which some people do)!
crap, i’m suing 386. and i got a Duron 750 at home. will reinstall.
Er. If you have a Duron machine, then you should install the k7 (or more recent k series) kernels. The generic 386 should work everywhere, but it’s not optimal for your CPU.
And you don’t need to reinstall! Just install (via aptitude or some GUI tool) the new kernel, edit grub.conf to point to the new kernel by default [actually, this is probably done by default, so nvm] and you are away. Multiple kernels can (and do) co-exist on a Linux machine. Grub (or your choice of boot manager) will pick one to load up when you boot. Unlike Windows, the kernel is swappable without reinstall
And why are you suing 386?! Isn’t a lawsuit for slowing down your machine a bit excessive? *grin*
[sorry about the typo nazism, it's just a phase]
heh. i’m too busy to worry over typos these days. i’ll try the k7… in the meantime, i got a lot to learn about linux!
but the post slug still has the typo! oh no.
can’t help you there… i’ve sort of taken leave of the syntax nazis. i’m still supporting the grammar nazi’s though.
hey! nice to know you trying Ubuntu! On the subject of linux… I’ve moved on to DSL which is insanely cool in its own way.
>>rather mispronounce as “uboontu” (which some people do)!
Well, actually thats pretty close to how its pronounced, and the closest text description I could give would be:
“u-boon-2″ (where the “boon” bit is short, pronounced like Sinhala “Bu”)
If in doubt, check the video where Nelson Mandela pronounces it.
Enjoy your new OS and if there is anything I can help you with please leave a comment on my site.
nice.. I wish I have found the WLW under Linux instead…
thx 4 this post..