New member intoduction

[chris1974]

I met a few of you at the Columbus Feisty party last week and I wanted to introduce myself to the rest of the group.

I hail from Columbus and have been a Linux/Ubuntu user for about a month or so. I must say, I have caught the Ubuntu bug! (but as in enthusiam, not bug as in glitch).

Last year, I began learning programming as a hobby, and eventually found my way to Linux. I now have great ambitions for Linux programming.

I think that Ubuntu has a great deal to offer those in my current profession, especially for start-ups who are looking to save money.

Currently, there appears to be no active movement to bring Linux into the legal profession. There has been one in years past, but it looks like Linux for Lawyers is dead. I would like to begin actively pushing Ubuntu for the legal profession (specifically, for solo attorneys and small firms). When I started my practice, software was expensive and my only choice was not to buy any. I hope to give start-up lawyers a legitimate choice in software and OS.

Linux has some shortcomings, however. The biggest missing element is practice management software. Windows has many options, but they are expensive and are not open source. Linux has almost no options. I checked sourceforge and freshmeat for options, but the few I have found are abandoned projects that I can not seem to compile. There might be a web-based app or two, but lawyers are weary of web-based applications for security reasons.

My future ambition is to help build a suite of practice management tools for Linux that integrate well with what is currently available (such as OpenOffice). For now, I will learn more programming skills.

Anyway, I just wanted to say hello to everyone. I would appreciate any encouragement you have to offer. Thanks!

Chris

[PWill]

Welcome to the team!

[jimbo2150]

Welcome Chris!

You might also want to check KDE-Apps.org and GnomeFiles.org for applications if you haven't yet. They include programs that are not necessarily in the Ubuntu repositories.

[Seisen]

I noticed that with accounting software and tax software. You really don't have many options like you do in Windows.

[jimbo2150]

I noticed that with accounting software and tax software. You really don't have many options like you do in Windows.

Actually I think that even though the offers are fewer, they are higher quality. Both HomeBank and GnuCash are much better than anything I have seen for Windows.

I am not if he is looking for accounting software, I think just a business management software (possibly employee/time-management or project management?).

[lyceum]

Welcome! You may want to see what it going on with one of the other projects and see if you can join or fork one that seems to fit what you are wanting to do with the program. That is the great thing about FOSS, you do not have to start from scratch, you can just mess with someone elses stuff.

[Bryce Schmidt]

I agree with the original post, that linux needs some type of practice management software for the legal practitioner, or at least for some of us. Personally, I knew that when I started my practice, I wanted a case management software, and at the time AbacusLaw fit the bill nicely. It was only a few hundred dollars initially, but now the price has skyrocketed to the point that I will most certainly be ditching it at some point in the future when I decide to add licenses. I've looked at modifying a simple database to fit what I need, but of course, I found that I don't have the amount of time to invest into it. For me it is important to have an integrated document management and calendar system, but the most important thing is to have document merge capabilities so that I don't have to cut and paste into documents. If there were an alternative to AbacusLaw in Linux, I would be very happy to switch to it.

[robertras]

I've only tried Linux, I don't own any machines running on it. I like the practice management software I have for Windows though. It all comes down to opinion on which is best - PC, Mac, or Linux. I enjoy all of them, they each have pros and cons.

[kjamc1982]

Hello everybody,

My name is Kerry, I am from Hamilton it is a city north of Cincinnati. I have been a user of Linux for the past ten to twelve years. I do not consider myself an expert by any means. I just recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my dell laptop.

I have use other Linux Distros in the past mostly been using Fedora this past year. I started using Linux with Red Hat, then went to Slackware, Fedora, and Arch Linux mostly. I will try to be in the IRC room as much as I can. Hope to have some fun.