I am now an ex-Windows user - well on one PC anyway.
For a little while now I've been thinking. I use a lot of open source software on my PC - Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird and GIMP for example - and very little commercial software other than some games. But up until one week ago, I was still using Windows XP.
So about a week ago I decided I should try and go without Windows and attempt at playing around with Linux again.
This is something I've tried many times before, starting with a purchased copy of Red Hat Linux about 6 years ago which I didn't get on with and moving through various other distros including Knoppix, Peanut, Puppy, XAPRM, Damn Small Linux, Mandrake, Debian, Red Hat for a second time and Ubuntu.
In almost all cases (I think other than Red Hat) I have set up a dual boot system with Windows and in every case I've come up against some sort of hurdle, be it networking (wireless was always a pain), sound or lack of software. The fact that I usually used a dual boot system meant that it was all too easy to give up and go back to Windows.
Out of the distros I have used, I liked the look and feel of Ubuntu so last week I decided to give it a second chance. Off I went to the Ubuntu website to download version 6.06 Dapper Drake - not the latest version, but according to what I'd read it was the most stable and compatible.
I decided to bite the bullit and scrap Windows from the offset giving me the incentive to actually learn Linux and overcome any problems. And there was a couple.
Installation of the system is wonderful. Put the CD into the drive and reboot the computer and I was taken into a live version that runs purely off CD. That way I could have a look around before installing. To do that was just a click of a desktop icon and work through a 6-step installer. Once complete, the system reboots, out comes the CD and the system is loaded from the hard drive.
The big problem now was networking. My Belkin wireless card was recognised by the system so there was no need for a driver disk but I could not get it to connect to the access point. The ethernet card in my system did work perfectly however so I connected to the Net using my server as a proxy and did some research. About an hour later I'd got wireless working and had some experience with the Linux terminal. Now I know how it works, there shouldn't be anywhere near as many issues if I re-install.
So with networking up and running, I had to figure out how to mount network shares. Access to all files stored on my server was important and I could easily get to these by browsing the network. However to make songs play in audio players that don't support playing over a network, I had to get these shares to appear in the local filesystem.
Back to the internet to learn all about installing the SMB Filesystem needed to access Windows shares and how to use the 'mount' command in the terminal. Now that's sorted I have full read/write access to all shares. I still need to set it up so that these mounts are connected automatically as I'm having to run a shell script on startup each time, but I'll get there.
So now I have a fully working system running Firefox, Open Office and GIMP - all of which where available with the OS - no further installation required. Support for MP3, Windows Media, Realmedia and Flash have all been added. I've also got Thunderbird and Opera which were obtained using a very simple package manager called Synaptic. No need to visit an external website for these applications.
I dare say there's still some things I haven't thought of yet that will need working out, but for now I have no need to return to Windows and doubt I will on this machine at least. With Ubuntu, Linux seems to have come along nicely and with a small amount of determination, it's great!
For a little while now I've been thinking. I use a lot of open source software on my PC - Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird and GIMP for example - and very little commercial software other than some games. But up until one week ago, I was still using Windows XP.
So about a week ago I decided I should try and go without Windows and attempt at playing around with Linux again.
This is something I've tried many times before, starting with a purchased copy of Red Hat Linux about 6 years ago which I didn't get on with and moving through various other distros including Knoppix, Peanut, Puppy, XAPRM, Damn Small Linux, Mandrake, Debian, Red Hat for a second time and Ubuntu.
In almost all cases (I think other than Red Hat) I have set up a dual boot system with Windows and in every case I've come up against some sort of hurdle, be it networking (wireless was always a pain), sound or lack of software. The fact that I usually used a dual boot system meant that it was all too easy to give up and go back to Windows.
Out of the distros I have used, I liked the look and feel of Ubuntu so last week I decided to give it a second chance. Off I went to the Ubuntu website to download version 6.06 Dapper Drake - not the latest version, but according to what I'd read it was the most stable and compatible.
I decided to bite the bullit and scrap Windows from the offset giving me the incentive to actually learn Linux and overcome any problems. And there was a couple.
Installation of the system is wonderful. Put the CD into the drive and reboot the computer and I was taken into a live version that runs purely off CD. That way I could have a look around before installing. To do that was just a click of a desktop icon and work through a 6-step installer. Once complete, the system reboots, out comes the CD and the system is loaded from the hard drive.
The big problem now was networking. My Belkin wireless card was recognised by the system so there was no need for a driver disk but I could not get it to connect to the access point. The ethernet card in my system did work perfectly however so I connected to the Net using my server as a proxy and did some research. About an hour later I'd got wireless working and had some experience with the Linux terminal. Now I know how it works, there shouldn't be anywhere near as many issues if I re-install.
So with networking up and running, I had to figure out how to mount network shares. Access to all files stored on my server was important and I could easily get to these by browsing the network. However to make songs play in audio players that don't support playing over a network, I had to get these shares to appear in the local filesystem.
Back to the internet to learn all about installing the SMB Filesystem needed to access Windows shares and how to use the 'mount' command in the terminal. Now that's sorted I have full read/write access to all shares. I still need to set it up so that these mounts are connected automatically as I'm having to run a shell script on startup each time, but I'll get there.
So now I have a fully working system running Firefox, Open Office and GIMP - all of which where available with the OS - no further installation required. Support for MP3, Windows Media, Realmedia and Flash have all been added. I've also got Thunderbird and Opera which were obtained using a very simple package manager called Synaptic. No need to visit an external website for these applications.
I dare say there's still some things I haven't thought of yet that will need working out, but for now I have no need to return to Windows and doubt I will on this machine at least. With Ubuntu, Linux seems to have come along nicely and with a small amount of determination, it's great!