Hello, and hope you had a good week. My day job kept me pretty busy so not much progress on my planned new Internet Marketing website. I decided to do a quick post about something close to my heart, using linux with internet marketing, in case it helps anyone else. I hope to sometime get round to doing a proper report on this topic, but for the moment I’ll just let you know how I manage.

I’ve used linux (more precisely Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop, or Opensuse, for over 5 years now, and while there have been occasional problems to get over (such as a bit of effort to get video working due to licensing issues, though much easier now) generally I have found the advantages over windows to be worth it. I got fed up with constantly having to reboot windows while loading software, always having to find a piece of software to do a job which inevitably I didn’t have, and then had to buy it, install it, before I could carry on. With linux, most of what you need is already there or you can select it easily and install it, and of course most of it is free, though I would gladly pay for it.

The modern linux systems install in around a half hour, with only one reboot, and are very easy to use, and update and to install extra software.

Anyway enough preamble, back to internet marketing. Basically the essentials you need are:

ftp program – I use Gnome ftp which comes ready installed in Suse.

Web editor – html – A program called Kompozer does the same job as Dreamweaver, but doesnt cost anything. I downloaded it, and followed videos showing how to use Dreamweaver, and applied the same to Kompozer, and managed to get along fine. Kompozer costs nothing.

Web editor for php – I use ‘Bluefish Editor‘. This was an option on installation for Suse. Works great and easy to use.

Office program – I use Openoffice, and have done ever since I discovered it years ago. I even wiped a paid for copy of MS Office from my computer as I realised I would never need it again. ANother advantage with Openoffice is that you can create pdf documents easily. it reads and writes MS word, excel, powerpoint files as well so I have no problem interacting with anyone using MS Office. Again, its free.

Photoshop – You can use a program called Gimp to do the same editing as in Photoshop, and it now reads Photoshop .psd files. Again it costs nothing, and is installed by default on Suse and many other linux systems.

Windows – The only drawback with using linux for internet marketing is that there are so many programs that use windows that you may want to use or at least test. Well my solution for this is to use windows in a virtual window so that it is available quickly without rebooting my computer and I get all the advantages of linux most of the time and can bring up WinXP in a virtual window in seconds when I need it. For this I use a virtualisation program called ‘Virtual Box‘ and since Sun bought the company it has become very easy to install and use and very stable. And guess what, its free!

So there you have a brief run down of the programs I use to do internet marketing using linux. May sound complicated, but believe me, the advantages of having most programs at my fingertips, quicker installation, and of course the fortune I saved by not having to pay the Microsoft tax is well worth it. In these days of broken economies and people losing there jobs, it is worth knowing that you do not need to be held to ransom by a bloated corporation in order to run your own internet marketing business.

I’ll try and find time to do a proper report on this with some videos to show how to install and use linux and the various programs, but may take me a while. In the meantime I’d recommend anyone to give Opensuse 11.1 a try, and install it on a spare drive or partition, or you can download the ‘live’ version which will run from disk without affecting your normal installation.

Thats it for now, will try and have a review of a new internet marketing product ready for my next post.

Good luck and success

Dave Smith