A Linux type?

As part of what we do, we help business people migrate over from their usually rotten Windows XP, Vista and what ever else incarnation of Redmond OS over to Linux. We found that some people really took to Linux while some got stuck in purgatory complaining constantly in the transition period. I found that certain types of personality as well as expectations makes the whole process smooth and dare I say even enjoyable?

• I found that the more open the new user is to a new OS, being more open to forget about Windows they are the more enjoyable the process is. "This used to work so much better on my laptop in Windows ..." kinda attitude will almost guarantee a world of pain.
• Having a positive attitude helps ... as in you are home ... your printer does not work instantly ... instead of just chalking it up to the new OS being bad just give it a whirl and think of the fun of trying out something new will make it enjoyable. 
• Trusting your new OS as well as your new found friend (me) when it comes to buying peripherals will help during the transition. 

Those with the attitude above really took to Linux like fish to water and it sorta became their bragging rights in among their friends. Remember too that these are pure business people without any prior Linux experience. So it's gratifying to me to over hear them in conversation with their friends "Aiya ... you are still using that slow piece of crap .. see my new Open Source OS! No virus can touch it and it's blazing fast!" It's nice to know we did one for Linux advocacy in our own way as well as fill our pockets up a bit :).

Another book to review! (Django E-Commerce)

The nice folks at Packt has sent me another book to review. This time the book is Django 1.2 E-Commerce. The sample title looks great which includes setting up an e-commerce site in 30 mins using the usual suspects from the Django framework: Admin, generic views and using Checkout from google. The example looks practical and easy to follow ... makes me like this book already. For those of you who want to get a whiff of what this book is like ... here is a link to the sample chapter.

https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/7009-chapter-2-setting-up-shop-in-30-minutes_0.pdf

Repoze BFG

I have been trying repoze BFG's tutorials the past few days and I must say that I like it just judging from the tutorials. Firstly I was very surprised the tutorials worked out of the box ... after being hammered around by the tutorials from Grok, so it was a nice surprise. Looking at the examples too it doesn't make my eyes bleed _so_much_ so I am definitely interested to know more about Repoze.

Developed by http://agendaless.com/ , on the whole the project has a good solid feel to it offering tons of documentations on it's site. Of course you cannot run that far away from the mind-melting Zope framework but then hey! trust me, it looks a whole lot better! It says that Repoze is inspired by Zope, Pylons and Django and I would say it shows in the code produced.

According to the site, Repoze is MV rather than MVC as there is not much of a 'Controller' to talk about. I am currently actively looking for a project where I can really put Repoze to the metal to see how it fits me in a project environment.

As someone said long time ago to me ... all frameworks suffer from the same disease ... it can really do the 90% fast and great but it's the last 10% that is going to blast the skin from your bones ... okay so I am paraphrasing, but you get my point. So, I am going to put this one through the paces hopefully initially with a smallish project that is not so heavy with the funky specs with just one or two bumps on the road to stretch the framework a bit.