Date:
Monday , March 05, 2007
Author:
Brian Boyko
Editor:
Jason Wall
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30 Days with Linux

Many people, daunted by Vista's hardware requirements and product activation issues, claim on various boards how they plan to "switch to Linux." We spend 30 days using nothing but Ubuntu Linux to find out if this is truly a viable alternative for the consumer.

continued...

Why Ubuntu?

Unlike the Windows or Mac OSes, there are many variants of Linux. They are customized and modular, which is why you will generally not see two users with the same Linux configuration. This makes it difficult for us to provide a true insight into the Linux world, but our goal is to pick the most popular, best-supported, and most user-friendly applications.

Ubuntu Linux is currently the distribution that "everyone is talking about" as the Linux distribution most likely to be easiest to use for the home user. It's got a long list of previous brethren which have also, at one time or another, made the same claim. Before Ubuntu, SuSE had the title and took it from Mandriva (back then known as Mandrake), and Mandrake took the title from RedHat (which, back in the 1990s, was much easier to install than Debian or Slackware).

Because it comes on a LiveCD, it's very easy to take Ubuntu and "test before deployment." Back in "ye olden days," you either had to tediously check every bit of your hardware to see if it's Linux compatible - or take the plunge: reformat your system and see what happens.

Ubuntu's LiveCD setup means that you can tell what's going to work and what's not without putting anything on your hard drive. It allows you to take a look at the OS and figure out if you would like it before taking the drastic step of a reformat.

Installation

The first thing I did was download Ubuntu from Ubuntu.com, and burned the CDs. You can use BitTorrent for a faster download if you have it, although a good FTP works just as well. I went with Ubuntu Edgy Eft (6.10) instead of Dapper Drake (6.06) because I wanted to test the latest stable version. If you don't have a need for a support contract, Edgy is probably the best for you.

I backed up my data to the Spire USB 2.0 80GB external hard drive. I had previously taken the precaution of formatting this disk as FAT32, rather than NTFS, because in the past, Linux distributions have had trouble writing to (though not reading from) NTFS partitions. Then it was just a matter of setting my BIOS to boot from the CD, plugging in the disc, and letting Ubuntu do its stuff.

To say that installation was easy would be an understatement. Using the LiveCD meant that you are already using the OS while you install it on your hard drive. Compare this to an installation of Windows XP or Mac OS X, where the computer is effectively useless until you install the OS. Mac OS 9 had a similar ability, so it’s surprising that it didn’t make it into OS X.

Additionally, one of the big advantages of the Live CD is that it is a very good indicator of how much of your existing hardware is going to be easy to set up. While there are some pieces of hardware that work with Linux but may not be immediately detected by the OS, knowing how much configuration you'll have to do (or, in the worst case scenario, how much hardware you have to replace) is a good way to make the decision for or against installing Ubuntu.

In my case, all the hardware on Whakataruna and Pugetina was recognized and deemed testable.

As for the install itself, as I wasn't doing any fancy dual-booting, I just had the computer wipe the hard drive and install Ubuntu. The process was completely painless - again, you can continue to use the Ubuntu LiveCD to explore the OS while you install.

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When installing the 64-bit version, there was a hiccup - it hung up on the reboot after installation, but hitting the reset button resolved that problem. With the 32-bit version, I didn't have this problem. Both times, I could remove the CD and boot up into Ubuntu.

First Boot

The desktop was clean - why wouldn't it be - and my iPod was already detected (though I couldn't play MP3 files yet... more on that later.)

The default UI is called Gnome, which utilizes a window manager called Metacity. Gnome is typically referred to as the "simpler" of the two big user interfaces for Linux. The other is KDE, which is more robust, but comes at the price of added complexity.

Gnome's default setting is with the menu in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, followed by a quick-launch-like panel of buttons, and a system tray with a clock on the upper-right. The lower left has a panel button which clears your desktop, followed by an application-switching taskbar in the center, a workspace manager in the bottom right, and a small trash icon in the corner.

A unique feature that Gnome has over Windows is that this desktop is fully customizable. You don't have to have a bar on the top and bottom. You can move the switching application taskbar to the top bar. You can do without the application switching taskbar entirely (using Alt-Tab to choose your applications). You can use a Mac OS9-like drop-down menu to open your programs. You can get rid of the top bar to make it more Windows-like, get rid of the bottom bar to make it more Mac-like, or simply create your own desktop layout. You can even, if you wish, change the panel's color, add "accessory" applications that run in the taskbar (the one I use the most is the system monitor, but you can also add a weather report, stock monitor, sticky-note app, battery monitor for notebooks, etc.), and change the color or transparency of the window.

KDE offers even more configuration options, but I decided to stick with Gnome to keep it simple.

I was a little confused how to take screenshots and create a text file at first, but I checked the applications list and found applications called "Take Screenshot" and "Text Editor." Doesn't get much more obvious than that. Take Screenshot is actually an application called "Gnome-Screenshot" and "Text Editor" is called "Gedit" - a notepad like program with spell-check and find-and-replace. Good to know. I right-clicked on the "take screenshot" button and found an option to add it to the top panel - convenient.

Now I was ready to move ahead with installing my applications.