Ubuntu

[i386]

I saw a Ubuntu button in Paul Moir's sig last week which prodded me into giving it a try...

I've been using Linux off and on since about 1997. IIRC, my first distribution was Slackware 2.0. Linux has gotten a lot easier to use since those days. Today I use it on two servers at work, and I always have it on one of my computers at home. I mostly like to have it around to play with and just evaluate new releases from time to time. Enough about that.

Installation

My Linux box had Fedora Core 5 on it. It didn't have any data on it I cared about so I just burned the Ubuntu iso and booted up the CD. It's a live cd so you could just try it out on your Windows computer without actually installing anything to your hard drive. I fiddled around with it for a while and decided I'd go ahead and install it. There's an "Install" icon right on the desktop. After answering a few simple questions the install kicked off. I switched my KVM switch over to my Windows box and played a few rounds of Quake 3. After I got done with that I flipped back to the Linux box and the install was done. I took the CD out and booted my new OS, this time from the hard drive.

First Impressions

The desktop was very similar to the one that ships with FC5. It didn't have any icons on the desktop which was fine with me. All the menus were pretty much the same. I fired up Firefox to make sure my network was working. The first thing I noticed was the fonts. They looked great! If you're a Linux user you know what I'm talking about. Ok so the network/Internet was up. I decided this fresh install would be a good opportunity to check out Firefox 2.0 RC2. For some reason I couldn't get the download link to work. No problem. I could always FTP it. I didn't see a FTP client in the menu. Rather than pulling up a terminal and going "old school" with it I tried out the Add/Remove software feature. Yup, gFTP was available so I tried that. I grabbed Firefox 2.0 RC2 from the ftp site and messed with it for a while. Then I wondered if I could access my Windows 2000 server. Yup, that worked too. I hardly ever print anything, but I thought I'd give that a shot while I testing things out. My printer is an HP LaserJet 1100 connected to my server and shared on the network. Again, no problems setting that up right from the GUI.

Conclusion
This was the easiest installation I've ever done. I think most people could do it no problem. It comes with everything an average home user would need. It's really easy to use. The only time I had to use the command line was to try out Firefox 2.0 RC2 (and I could probably have done that with the file manager thingie). I can't get over how good the fonts look. If you've ever been curious about Linux, this is a great way to try it out. If you like, you can just use the live CD without installing it. It works exactly the same, it's just a little slower.

 

[rwise]

Re: Ubuntu

Those live Cd's and DVDs are great, I used the Knoppix live DVD to rescue files from a friends crashed hard drive with ntfs partition/s. Another xp box could not see the files on his drive, but the knoppix could with no problems! My son and son in law are both running the Ubuntu now as well as my future daughter in law, Linux is gaining on microshaft every day!

 

[bjcsc]

Re: Ubuntu

I have a question for you guys. My old desktop hardly gets used anymore as it has a shaky ME OS, could I reformat the hard drives and do a clean install of this OS from the CD you can download on that site? What about its networking capabilities with my laptop?

 

[Paul Moir]

Re: Ubuntu

Yes and yes bjcsc. The networking abilities are far beyond most any Microsoft product, so SMB shares (the "Network Neighbourhood" type networking used in your typical home network) are no problem. Both file sharing and network printing work as you would expect.

I had used various distributions since the mid 90s, starting with Slackware, then Red Hat, then SuSE and then back to Red Hat up to 7.3. Before that I was using Coherent/286. But I had never used a Debian based distro nor had I been able to completely ween myself off Windows. Now on my personal computer I haven't booted Windows in 9 months.

The look & feel of Ubuntu should be close to FC 5 since they both use the same window manager - Gnome. Gnome is simple, efficient and predictable but it isn't as customizable as KDE, so I quickly switched to kubuntu. The switch was as simple as installing the package "kubuntu-desktop" thanks to Debian's very efficient package system. KDE is resource heavy and more buggy than Gnome, but I can't live without some of it's features. On my old UltraSparc1 I use Gnome.

There's a few applications you'll want to try out besides the necessities like Picasa & OO. KMail (part of KDE, but available separate from it) has actually beat out Thunderbird for me. Wine & dosbox to run whatever old DOS & windows programs you must use. VMWare if wine doesn't work out. VMWare is now giving away copies of their software free. It allows you to create a perfectly functional virtual machine in an Xwindow.

There's something very strange about watching Windows XP boot up in an Xwindow. Last time I did this, it was actually booting up on a remote Linux computer, linked with "ssh -X", which just heightened the absurdity.

The thing that impressed me most was the package handling though. Upgrading major revisions is as simple as setting the new repositories and clicking "Update". Minor revisions happen automatically. Compared with hunting on the web for RPMS to resolve dependencies, this stuff is child's play. I understand Red Hat is much better now though. It's amazing how far along all the distros have come in the last few years.

 

[i386]

Re: Ubuntu

Yup... I tried Debian a few years ago and liked it. Ubuntu, feels like a more polished Debian. Google hasn't released Picasa for Linux .

I could switch to Linux on my laptop if I wanted to but I don't think I would be as productive/happy until:

Wireless networking for my laptop works as easy as it does in Windows.

Suspend/Hibernate works reliably.

A program as good as Picasa is made available. I'm evaluating F-Spot, but it's not there yet.

I really hate to give up Photoshop too. I've been using it since 3.0 and I know it pretty for what I use it for (Web Graphics). Gimp would be fine for that. I'm just not as used to it that is all.


Speaking of distros Paul, have you done LFS yet? I think every Linux user should do it once. It was really interesting building a Linux system from nothing.


Linux on the desktop has came a LONG way. I'd invite anyone who's interested to try it out. The live CD distros are great. You can try Linux as much as you like without making any commitment at all.

You won't have to look far for help either.

 

[Paul Moir]

Re: Ubuntu

Picasa for linux is out in fact, as well as Google Earth. I used to run the Windows Picasa in wine (which is essentially what Picasa for linux is) and it seemed a little faster. But Picasa for Linux has got better integration "outside" of wine.
The biggest issue is Flash. Adobe hasn't released since 7 despite various promises. People are getting really fed up with that one, and are starting to suspect it of vaporware.
VMWare is a bit of a solution to Photoshop since you're running a perfect XP box in it. Again here we are dealing with the uselessness of Adobe.

I haven't tried building linux right from scratch yet. I'm not unfamiliar with the inner workings of linux and no stranger to compiling programs and what not. But it still looks like it would be an interesting challenge.

Now back to debugging kernel 2.6.x so I can get it fixed on my old UltraSparc 1. Something is tickling the graphics card the wrong way and killing X.

 

[i386]

Re: Ubuntu

Wow, Picasa for Linux. I didn't see it before. Nice to have a .deb package too. So I downloaded that and installed it without ever bringing up a terminal which was nice. It's pretty dang slow on this old P3. I tried Google Earth too. It's basically unusable on this machine, but with a faster machine and good video card it would be fine. It's a fun toy to play with but I don't need it anyway.

Yes, Flash is dissapointing. It would seem that would be one of the easier applications to port to Linux.

I haven't played with Wine or VMWare in a quite a few years. Both were more trouble than they worth IMO back then. I'll give 'em another try though just to be fair.

I think you'll get a kick out of LFS. It's not even that challenging unless you veer from the instructions to customize something, which I didn't. X Windows System doesn't even come into play unless you decide to move forward to Beyond Linux From Scratch. That was the one and only time I've ever compiled X from source. Heh, I USED to think compiling a kernel took a long time!

Debugging you say? Hopefully just tweaking compile options and not hacking the source. Heh, but if you are, more power to you! 8) I've never messed around with non x86 hardware. Sure would be cool to have a RISC system of some sort to play with.



Here's a few more things I tried out...

Windows networking again. I was able to connect to my Windows but not the other way around. I found the "shared folders" thingie and went from there. The full Samba package had to be installed. So I did that (again from the gui) and could "see" my Linux box, but could not authenticate to get to my shared folder. Keep in mind, I've accomplished this before on previous systems. I've just never done it without breaking out the terminal. So I ended going to the Terminal and setting up a smbpasswd for my user and it worked. I think the average Windows user might have a little trouble getting that to work.

On to setting up a (MS) VPN connection... I Googled a bit and found an article on setting it up. It was easy and it works. I connected with VPN and then used Remote Desktop to access a W3K3 server. Cool. I didn't try browsing any files yet. This was a first for me on Linux.


Cool stuff.

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Ubuntu

I have been teaching myself linux over the last year. At work I have setup a RH ES4 server (many times) and RH 9 as well a Fedora server (testing only). I also did a Gentoo box, but have not used that in a long time.
I haven't tried incorparating one into our windows network yet, not comfortable enough yet.
I'll try Ububtu on my XP laptop to see how it is.

 

[teknotrav]

Re: Ubuntu

I tried Ubuntu, I love it. It is so much better than windows. It runs faster as well

 

[teknotrav]

Re: Ubuntu

I tried Ubuntu, I love it. It is so much better than windows. It runs faster as well. You can also order it on cd for free at ubuntu.com

 

[Xcusme]

Re: Ubuntu

Personally, I prefer Kubuntu....

 

[i386]

Re: Ubuntu

More fun...

Got XP running in VMWare. So cool. Photoshop, Illustrator, even vpn works in my VM. Found a good tutorial which made it pretty easy. I will probably play with this some more with some other operating systems.

Fiddled with Wine a little bit. No thanks. Maybe some other time.

Installed the Kubuntu packages. Here's my thoughts on that...

I expected it to run slower than Gnome. I was wrong. It seems to launch programs a little faster. It might take a little longer to load.

The first thing that caught my eye was the clock was in 24 hour format. It probably took me 5 minutes to figure out how to change it to 12 hour format. Not very intuitive.

Took a few minutes to setup the panel at the bottom. Even in Windows, I prefer to just put the programs I use frequently in the "quick launch" and stay out of the "start menu". This was easy to do.

I understand why so many applications begin with "k". It's still annoying, even more so than applications that begin with "g". I don't know why, but it is.

Fonts look great.

I like the file manager better (Konqueror). Still trying to force myself to use it. I've been using Linux since before there was a descent file manager and I just find myself doing it all from a terminal. Strangly, I almost never do that in Windows.

A lot of apps get bundled with KDE and Gnome packages. This causes the K/G menu to get cluttered with a lot of stuff you don't use. Gnome's menu editor lets you toggle menu items on and off. I didn't see that in KDE's menu editor. I didn't want to delete anything so I just left it alone (cluttered).

KDE seems more configurable than Gnome. Perhaps too much for novice users. Having said that, it might be the best thing going for an advanced user. I am going to invest some time in reading through the KDE documentation. I have a feeling I'm going to find some features I'll like that I won't find just by clicking around. There's a lot of annoyances I want to complain about, but I should read the docs first.

I think I'm going to like KDE better though I've always seemed to favor Gnome in the past. This must be a newer version than I've used before because it's the most polished KDE I've seen.

 

[chugger]

Re: Ubuntu

I didn't know there were so many linux users on this site. I've been running it at home since 2001 starting with Red Hat then Suse, Mandrake, back to Red Hat and finally LFS. Currently running LFS 4.0 with Kernel 2.6 and FVWM2 as the window manager.

The OS has come a long way in the past few years. The biggest improvement I've seen is the journaling file systems but the driver support has improved as well. The lack of Flash is annoying.

 

[i386]

Re: Ubuntu

Anything keeping you guys from using Linux exclusively?

 

[Plainsman]

Re: Ubuntu

Anything keeping you guys from using Linux exclusively?

I'm not familiar enought with it yet. I tried for awhile on my laptop, but couldn't find a wireless driver for the dell. I have a small Windows network and couldn't print as well as access the files on the server.

Like I said, I am teaching myself when I get time and have the notion to do so. Maybe in time I will put it back on the laptop.

 

[chugger]

Re: Ubuntu

I use it exclusively at home but am not what you would call a power user. I use OpenOffice.org for MS office documents, gphoto2 to download and print pictures from a Kodak Easyshare camera and docking station, The Gimp for photo editing, CUPS for printing, firefox for web browsing, Netscape for email, and Realplayer, Xine, and Mplayer for vidio. That's about all I use the PC for. I'm not interested in vidio games but do have Quake installed and play it occaisionally. I only have one PC so there's no network.

 

[i386]

Re: Ubuntu

EricKems, Linux works quite well accessing SMB shares once you get it setup right. Sometimes the GUI's are only almost good enough so you have to do a little tweaking from the command line. It's always improving though.

That's great chugger!

I have a WIN2K Active Directory domain setup at home. I have some important data on it, but mainly I just use it to test stuff for work. Most of my customers have W2K or W2K3 server(s) and I like to test things from time to time before implementing it at their site. I'm concerned if I let go of this I'll pay for it later by "losing touch" with Windows.

The wife has a Mac so she could care less.

My "gaming rig" (winxp box) is also a client pc in my windows test environment.

I use my laptop constantly at work. I'm constantly jumping from one wireless network to another. I can't be fiddling with stuff all the time. I need it to work.

I want to switch to Linux because I really enjoy using it and I like open software. I just don't know if I can be as productive in my work environment.

I should get another hard drive for my lappy for linux and commit a couple of weeks to using it and see how it goes.

 

[Paul Moir]

Re: Ubuntu

Flash 9 Beta finally arrived yesterday.

Down in the comments someone's got a repository up for Ubuntu if you trust them.

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/10/beta_is_live.html

 

[i386]

Re: Ubuntu

You beat me to it!

 

[Paul Moir]

Re: Ubuntu

It looks like the major push for Ubuntu 7 (April-May or thereabouts) is to increase laptop compatibility. Hopefully that will help with the wireless networking card situation.

Drivers have always been a big issue. Linux doesn't make it easy for them to be integrated into the kernel without providing source, and the small market share has made the OS easy to overlook. But things are changing on both fronts for the better.