Blog Editors For Linux

December 27, 2007

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A few days ago I made the decision to move my home machine to the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, due to the fact that I’m using it a lot more at work lately, so I could use the experience, but my machine also runs better under Linux than it does under Windows. Maybe if I pick up some more RAM for my box I’ll go back to XP, but we’ll have to see about that.

One of the things that I’m giving up by moving to Linux, though, is the ability to use Windows Live Writer to edit this and my other sites. I’ve tried to run it under Wine, but it just doesn’t work. So a little time on Google highlighted a few of the options that penguin-heads have when trying to edit their blogs. I don’t have experience with all of these packages yet, but those that I do, I’ll mention. And over the next few days I’m going to be trying all of them, so I’ll post an update at that time.

ScribeFire for Firefox: This Firefox extension will obviously work on any platform, so it’s not really Linux-specific - but it is what I’m using to edit this post. I used to use this plug-in back when it was known as Performancing for Firefox and it’s drop-dead simple to use, although it is lacking a few features, such as WordPress tags. But once you get it installed, a simple tap of the F8 key brings up your editor and you’re ready to go.
BloGTK: This one is probably the best of the ‘offline’ editors that I’ve used, but it’s a bit of a pain to get working correctly. First of all, your options when configuring an account are Blogger, Movable Type and MetaWeblog. Um, excuse me? There’s this thing called WordPress now. It’s kind of popular as a blogging platform. To configure BloGTK to work with WordPress you need to configure it using the Movable Type API, although there’s no mention of how to do this. I’ve never even *heard* of MetaWeblog, so I can’t comment there. You can get BloGTK from the SourceForge site in the link above, or enter sudo apt-get install blogtk from the shell.
GNOME Blog Entry Poster: This will do in a pinch if you’ve got nothing else to use, but it’s a pretty stripped down blog editor. I did give it a try last summer, and it does perform as advertised, but if you’re looking for something that’s feature-rich, you may want to look elsewhere.
Drivel Journal Editor: If you’re a LiveJournal user, then Drivel is for you. If you’re not, you can still use it for other platforms, although, like BloGTK, you also need to use the Movable Type API to configure it for WordPress. The last stable release for this editor was in the summer of 2006, so it is a little dated.

So, you might be asking, why not just use the built in WordPress editor? To be honest, I don’t really like it. Maybe when they overhaul it for 2.4 version of WordPress, which is due in late January I’ll give it another try, but for the short term, it looks like ScribeFire is the editor of choice. If any other Linux users prefer something else, I’d like to hear about it.

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