Linux Lawyering

Part of the point of Linux Lawyering is to document my efforts to avoid monthly subscription fees aka SAAS (software as a service). Adobe Acrobat is one such subscription I’ve jettisoned. To be sure, an Acrobat replacement is necessary for my law practice. PDFs are ubiquitous, and my work revolves around them. The appeal I’m currently working has a 3800 page PDF record, which is about average or even on the shorter side (the biggest record I recall handling was around 15,000 PDF pages). So I need the ability to search, extract pages, perform OCR (optical character recognition) on scanned pages, and otherwise work with voluminous PDFs. I can’t imagine that there are too many practices left that don’t need at least some of these tools. ...

The first item on my list of “unexpected problems switching to Linux” has to do with power management, which manifests in two ways. On my Zenbook, Debian doesn’t put the device to sleep. At least not properly. It’s dead on the regular, even after say only an overnight off the charger (and when the battery was well over 50% the evening before). My Chromebook can last a week or more in sleep mode, and the same Zenbook running Windows behaves as expected. So I don’t understand this problem, nor can I troubleshoot effectively; I can’t determine what conditions cause the failure to sleep vs. not. I assume it’s hardware related, but then all the other hardware seems to operate properly (eg., screen brightness, keyboard backlight, volume control, etc. — all the things that I’d think more likely to be proprietary and thus more likely to have poor hardware support.) ...

Earlier this morning, I installed Debian with the GNOME desktop environment (DE). GNOME isn’t particularly customizable cf. Plasma and other DEs, but there are a few things I do to make it work for me. This post will be updated as I add additional customization. –> Keyboard Shortcuts CTRL-ALT-T to open a terminal Settings>Keyboard>Custom Shortcuts>Add Shortcut use “gnome-terminal” as the command (omit quotation marks) Switch desktop workspaces Settings>Keyboard>Custom Shortcuts>Navigation I like CTRL-SUPER-<arrow>, which is the Windows default and I want all my machines to behave the same way Enter standby mode Settings>Keyboard>Custom Shortcuts>Add Shortcut “systemctl suspend” Super-E to open Files (explorer) Settings>Keyboard>Custom Shortcuts>Add Shortcut “nautilus” as the command –> Other ...

I mentioned that a hardware problem with my existing Trigkey mini PC is going to require a warranty replacement, so I ordered a used HP desktop in the bigger but still reasonable “small form factor” sizing. It arrived yesterday, and this post documents my initial setup process. Hardware specs: The unit I received is the HP Elitedesk 805 G6. I had ordered the Prodesk G6, but the Elitedesk has some upgraded enterprise features and is essentially the same otherwise, so not complaining. ...

I mentioned in a prior post that my current desktop machines are mini PCs. The one I picked up for my home office and testing purposes is a Trigkey S6, running an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS CPU, with 32GB DDR5 & 500GB SSD. Mini PCs come in a variety of configurations, but most are small boxes (the Trigkey is about 5″W x 5″D x 2″H) that run CPUs and RAM designed for low power applications like notebooks. As I understand it, the Intel NUC opened the door to this form factor and there are options available from established hardware makers like ASUS. There are also a number of lesser known manufacturers, of which Trigkey is one. The name brand units are substantially more expensive. ...

It’s time to start expanding on my initial post where I wrote briefly about this new linux lawyering project. One of the reasons is that I just don’t like Windows that much. To be fair, I get it – Windows is pretty good these days. It’s a long way from 3.1, which was the first version I loaded on some old 486 DX2 or something back in the day. I haven’t seen the BSOD in a year or perhaps even years on Windows 10/11, where it used to crash on the weekly or daily. ...

I’m a lawyer, licensed in Maine and Utah. My practice is a mix of some administrative law, some litigation, and a lot of deep research and writing. For some time I’ve been thinking about transitioning the tech/software aspect of my practice away from a paid/SAAS model towards open source. There are a number of reasons for this, among them that I’ve been interested in open source projects since the 90s. I’m so old I remember checking out freeware and shareware floppy discs from the library. ...