A creative suite

This is a log of the steps taken to install and configure a design standard suite of free software for desktop publishing.

The software in this suite is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) for photo editing, Scribus for page layout, and Inkscape for vector graphics.

For PDFs, on Linux the print to file function is set to create a PDF using Ghostscript. To edit a PDF on Linux use PDF Mod. On Windows, Sumatra PDF is an open source PDF reader. Scribus in Windows includes everything needed to create PDFs. To create PDF’s in Windows in programs other than Scribus, you can install PDF Creator at PDF Forge, though you have to watch out for the adware it’ll try to install.

The desktop setup is Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. That’s Long Term Support — this version will be supported into the year 2019.

The goal is to set up a complete desktop publishing system for producing print publications like newspapers, magazines and books as well as digital eBooks.

The steps taken to install the software will be given in a cookbook style. Installation of the suite of programs will be done on both Linux and Windows systems. Sorry, don’t have a Mac and besides see what the guy who launched the free software movement, Richard Stallman, has to say: “Why you should not buy Apple computer products.”

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