Switching to Linux

I’ve recently switched from Windows to Linux.

The main impetus was that I’m trying to help Katherine Yoshiwara (my wife) code her math textbooks into PreTeXt (http://mathbook.pugetsound.edu/), and the key players creating PreTeXt all say things like “I’m not familiar with how to do this in Windows, but it’s simple in Linux.”

I set up my current (Christmas gift) pc to dual boot Ubuntu Mint and Windows10. I first practiced on my previous (and dying) pc, and I was unwilling to abandon Windows entirely.

A turning point was last week when I got onedrive-d running, so now I can have my Microsoft OneDrive directory files synced and available when in Linux.

I’d already discovered that I can create, read, and edit MS Office files using LibreOffice (provided with Linux), Google Docs, and with Chrome plug-ins, so I have no worries about collaborating with others that use MS Office formats.

Then two days ago my laptop refused to reboot in Linux.The machine hung up at the same spot with a message I could not understand (about performing fsck manually) even when I tried selecting earlier versions of Linux at startup. I could still boot in Windows, but I now think that was one mistake that led to a bigger one: I okayed an update to Dropbox, and when the update was complete, Windows had killed “grub” and Linux was nowhere to be found on my computer.

But using my still-working old laptop, I managed to find online how to restore grub, then how to perform the manual fsck (I managed to follow steps, but I still have no idea what I was actually doing). And then I still had to repair a github directory (the corruption of which had led me to try a reboot in the first place).

But I think I’m back in business. And I'm even more convinced that Linux is the way to go.

PreTeXt: A Promising Tool for Open Source Textbooks

Although I have been (and remain) largely unimpressed with the quality of the great majority existing open source math textbooks, I now believe there is hope on the horizon.

The model used by open software developers, namely of modifying existing materials and improving them, can apply to math textbooks. Rob Beezer’s PreTeXt tool gives authors a means of producing digital textbooks that are superior to existing popular commercial textbooks.

With PreTeXt you can convert a (properly marked up) plain text file into html format that is optimized for reading on mobile devices. It uses MathJax for the mathematical expressions, and the developers are designing to take advantage of open software like the Sage cell for interactivity and WeBWorK or MyOpenMath for homework checkers.

Another cool feature is that PreTeXt can take the same source text file and output LaTeX and hence pdf, for students who may want a printed version of the textbook.

The readability on mobile devices, the adaptability of the source files, the tools for interactivity, and the attention the developers pay to accessibility issues are huge benefits to adopting PreTeXt books (which, by the way, are not limited to math—PreTeXt has also been used in computer science, poetry, and music textbooks).