Linux

Well I took the plunge again and tried to install Linux on my PC. I am by no means a Linux guru of any kind but for those that really know nothing about it, Linux is a free operating system. It’s been around quite some time and is known for it’s stability, speed and security. Despite this it never became terribly popular because it was quite a cow to install and use and had few games and other popular applications. In short, it was the geeks’ operating system. Microsoft’s Windows held the market for operating systems very well for good reason.

Things are changing, however. For one thing the games market is shifting rapidly from MS Windows PC games to the consoles. How permanent this is is anyone’s guess but it does mean the lack of games in Linux is less significant when compared to Windows than it once was. As well the open source community has changed. It’s got a lot of projects, some of which are quite mature and useful and the elitism I saw before has been tempered to more reasonable levels.

At the same time innovation in Windows desktop environments has pretty much died. New features and applications are few and often serve Microsoft more than it’s customers. Windows Vista was at best a minor improvement over Windows XP, and after all that time too. Microsoft’s newer features like tabbed browsing and Aero are essentially copied from other places. Perhaps the company is focused elsewhere, after all consoles, mobile phones and general web browsing is as much used as a desktop these days. The market itself is clearly changing.

So I looked up the various distributions Linux has and selected Ubuntu. My attempt to run the regular version failed rather miserably, however the 64 bit version has installed with no fuss with a dual boot situation so I can still I use Windows XP when I wish.

So far I’m fairly impressed. Browsing, music, videos were all working fine. Sound, mouse, keyboard, hard drive, graphics it all works. My USB which for whatever reason didn’t like most USB devices suddenly accepts a USB memory stick it never accepted before, which certainly doesn’t impress me on Windows. I can even use my Windows partition within Linux. The GUI apparently called Gnome is very clean and simple (possibly too simple) with all the features I’ve ever used on Windows. Screensavers, backgrounds, hardware info, themes etc are all here.

It uses the excellent Firefox browser I am used to and has OpenOffice, a free Office suite which i have briefly dabbed with before and knew it was good. It is this that I am using to draft my blog entry you are reading. It has a nice little weather application very unobtrusive. All in all a good set of included applications.

It’s not to say it’s all problem free. Getting the better resolutions I usually use required me to use a console command to access the Nvidia settings manger. Not a very big deal but not really intuitive. After all the GUI has a built in resolution changer. Also the search on my Windows partition for a file just went on and on so I assume failed. In some ways installing new programs is easier because many programs are available with what is essentially a program browser with combined installer/uninstaller which takes it right off the internet and installs it for you. However, for those not on that browser, installation via command lines knowing about things like dependencies will take me some practice.

I have also discovered, much like other 64 bit operating systems (eg Vista’s and XP’s) there are issues. The browser works fine but flash and java does not, for example. I can install the 32 bit version of Firefox and this solves it and of course the 32 bit Ubuntu doesn’t have that problem but it does give me an idea of what Windows XP 64-bit and other 64 bit operating system users have to deal with.

I’ve only used it for a day or so now. No doubt there’s more to learn which I will endeavour to inform you on.