4 open source tools I used to write a Linux book

4 readers like this.
open up

Opensource.com

I spent the past year or so writing Learn Linux in a Month of Lunches, which is designed to introduce desktop Linux to non-technical users. This is a rundown of the tools I used to create the book, with the HUGE caveat that tools are just that—tools. They don't actually do any work or planning for you. However, the right tools make the work much easier. These are the tools that were right for me.

Open source tools for writing

Brackets and Asciidoc

I wrote the whole book in Asciidoc using the Brackets editor. I have written about this process before, because Asciidoc is amazing. It is simple markup, not unlike Markdown, that easily turns into PDFs (via a2x). I spent almost no time formatting my manuscripts. I just worried about words. Brackets has a great extension that rendered Asciidoc for me, so I could make sure everything looked OK. It was a wonderful way to work, essentially just pure writing and no formatting.

GIMP

Speaking of screenshots, I handled everything in GIMP. While the GIMP interface hasn't gotten any easier to work with, it doesn't change much, so I've had years to learn it. I also did a few charts using LibreOffice Draw, but GIMP was really my workhorse graphics program.

Git

I tried to use Git for years and it never sunk in. I think part of that is because I didn't have a good project I needed it for. Luckily for me, when I moved to writing in Asciidoc, it meant I had to use my publisher's private Git repository to submit chapters. It made for a very easy workflow. Instead of uploading documents somewhere, and downloading them for comments, Git handled everything for me. Comments were inserted in the text, using the Asciidoc comment syntax. We didn't do any fancy branching or forking and I'm OK with that.

Xubuntu 12.04

I use Xubuntu 12.04. It's steady and sturdy and it did everything I needed it to. It's over four years old, but it has all of the software and functionality I need. The nice thing about the LTS Ubuntu releases is that you really can use them for years without even realizing it's been that long.

Other tools I used

Dropbox

I know. I know. It's closed-source and proprietary. But it works so well! I had access to my files everywhere, which was good when I wasn't on my usual computer. It also came in handy for the few times I needed Windows screenshots.

Skype

This wasn't my choice. My publisher is virtual, so everyone working there uses Skype to talk to each other and to writers. I used Skype on Linux and had no issues, although there were occasional hiccups on the Windows end of things, which I found a little funny. I wasn't a Skype guy when I started writing the book and I'm not a Skype guy now, but it worked consistently, which is all I can ask. I was lucky, because the future for Skype on Linux doesn't look great.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox continues to amaze me. It let me spin up different distributions and desktop environments in the space of minutes without needing extra hardware, although I did eventually need to buy a spare hard drive. I recommend it in the book as an easy way to get Linux running, and it was great for me in terms of getting screenshots.

Email

I feel silly mentioning this, since everyone uses email for everything, but email was a huge part of writing this book. My editor and I spoke regularly over Skype, but we also did a lot of planning and organizing over email. I know email isn't cool and there are all sorts of pushes to get rid of it, but it does come in handy for lots of things. Sorry Slack!

Remember the Milk

I recently wrote a long love letter to Remember the Milk. There are lots of moving parts when you're writing a book, from writing, to marketing, to editing, to researching. Remember the Milk allowed me to plot out what needed to be done and when. It also kept my work and personal life straight.

Paper

This isn't an app or a tool. I just find it helpful to print things. My editor recommends printing when it is time to edit, so you see the text in a different way. I also had hard copies of my Asciidoc documentation. Paper is nice!

Post-its

I got a huge package of Post-Its from a conference and found them when I started writing the book. I used little 3/8 X 1 7/8" ones to write short notes to myself. I could fit only a sentence or two on each one, so they were concentrated yet easy-to-deal-with. And now, when I use a regular size Post-It, I feel like I have a ton of space.

Fountain pens

I don't like to fetishize office supplies, but I wound up buying a Lamy Safari fountain pen during the start of the book, and I really actively enjoyed writing with it. Later on, I added a Pilot Metropolitan Fountain pen. They're cheap fountain pens that feel great and made mundane things, like taking notes, feel wonderfully luxurious. Now, when I use a ballpoint pen, I feel like I'm slumming it. I can't recommend taking the fountain pen plunge enough. One interesting thing to note is that there is a fair amount of analog stuff on this list. Technology is wonderful, but there are a reason some classic tools—like pens and paper—are classics. At the same time, I'm grateful to live in the time of Asciidoc! If there's one takeaway from writing this book, it's that you need to find your personal balance between high- and low-tech. It's worth taking the time to think about.

User profile image.
Steven Ovadia writes LinuxRig.com, which features The Linux Setup, interviews with desktop Linux users. He is an academic librarian who writes about how users interact with information in an online context for assorted Library Science journals. He is the author of Learn Linux in a Month of Lunches. You can see all of his publications at steven.ovadia.org

6 Comments

Interesting...

I would change dropbox with OwnCloud or NextCloud or SeaFile. And Skype with Jitsi...

Why always we (GNU/Linux or free software users) must adapt to closed solutions, why not the opposite??

've phun!

It's tough when we don't have the numbers on our side!

In reply to by victorhck (not verified)

You haven't mentioned a program that can handle CMYK graphics. Without these, you can't print your book commercially. There's a free tool, CMYKtool; and you can manipulate an image in the Gimp, save it as an .ora file, open it with Krita, save it as a CMYK tiff or jpeg, and then drop the graphic into Scribus, which can save in CMYK.

That's a great point. My publisher is handling all of that stuff for me (I'm very lucky!), but it's something that needs to be considered.

In reply to by mokane (not verified)

Not to steer you away from a tool you already know and love, but have you looked at Sphinx (http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/)? In my limited experience with such tools, I found Sphinx to be a joy to work with.

(That said, I'll take a gander at ASCIIdoc to see how it compares.)

Very cool! For me, ASCIIdoc wasn't much of an option. It was either that or LibreOffice. It just turned out that I loved it. But I love any project that lets us escape word processor UIs!

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.