A big jump to Linux - uBuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) - Updated!
Honestly I’m sick of Windows for the time being - it is very hard to keep your system tidy and up to mark without doing any significant tweaking, installing various security tools and make sure everything is up to date and in check. Chances are, once a while you’ll have some unexpected viral being transmitted in a newly discovered loophole, that even your best security suite could miss. By the time any patches are released to overcome such problem, the damage has already been done.
The only thing I like of using Windows is by far the fact that almost all games are designed to be run on windows-only, and the fact that it is rather easy to use. At least for Windows XP. Vista is coming soon, but I don’t think I can afford owning one license of such OS. Not to mention that I’ll definitely need a major hardware upgrade! More money, which I don’t have!
So, one day, I sit down in the office and decided that I’ll really try out Linux this time and try to make it work. After scouting around for which distribution I should try, I ended up with uBuntu. Once I finished getting the ISO images, burned them, and then use some partitioning tool to make space on my hard drive for the uBuntu installation.
On a side note, I do not pick Linux because of the Penguin.
Notice how the uBuntu logo represents a circle of people? Their tag line is ‘Linux for Human Beings’
I’m used to Mandrake (now Mandriva) and Red Hat (before Fedora was born) needing three separate partitions for installation, one for the bootstrap (/boot) one for the main filesystem (/) and the other for the virtual memory (/swap). I’m kind of surprised when uBuntu only needs two (the main filesystem and the swap). Being unsure of whether I would keep it or its yet-another-20-minute-Linux try-outs, I only allocate 4GB for the OS and 1GB for the swap (someone told me the swap size is overkill, but I think its fair enough).
Installation was a breeze, it took approximately 15 minutes to go through the dialog boxes, creating partition and copying files into the hard disk. After the process is completed, the PC reboots and loads the freshly installed uBuntu 6.10 ‘Edgy Eft’.
At first, startup time appears to be long, the boot screen stays on for almost twice the time as compared to my Windows XP’s. However, I learned that it is for a good reason - no more waiting for almost one minute (a few sometimes) after you log on for your session to load itself. Being not in touch with the Linux world for almost a few years, I am rather surprised that everything works out of the box with this distribution. My network card, graphic card, dual core, USB devices, my Canon iP4200 was all detected.
A quick reading then reveals on how to install basic stuffs like nVidia accelerated driver, a few needed codecs (well, making things free also means they couldn’t include the all-important mp3 codecs), and basic tricks you can do with the OS. Somehow using command-line in the terminal window appears normal (perhaps because I am doing that 98% of my time at work. Yes I administer Unix systems). Within 20 minutes of fiddling and using it, I already felt at home with the OS, know where everything are and how to get everything working.
Then something surfaced in my head - three letters ‘XGL’. I know this is referring to something interesting, but I couldnt figure it out. Random search of ‘Xgl Ubuntu‘ reveals that I can configure it to run an accelerated 3D-Desktop with extreme windows effects (rivaling upcoming Windows Vista) without much effort. Took me a few tries to get things in order though, and after that, I arrived at a wobbly and spinning desktop!
The wobbly windows effect is cute, but it gets disgusting after a while, so I disabled the wobbling, but I left the translucency, spinning cube and fade effect on. I love these :D
uBuntu with Beryl 3D Desktop - you can download the original file here. I know, no sane people would play THAT many video at one time. I’m just showing the ability :)
Before I know it, it is already about three weeks I’m running fully on uBuntu - I only rebooted into Windows XP once to resize the partitions once again. This time I shrunk the Windows XP partition down to 10GB, making way to about 30GB for my root (/) filesystem in uBuntu.
Looks like I’m going to only boot into Windows XP for games. I still couldn’t make them run properly on Wine (it’s a tool to run windows apps on Linux). Not really a big deal though. I hardly plays them anyways.
If you’re looking for useful basic guides for uBuntu Linux, you might want to check out these sites (they have been very helpful for me so far):
- Unofficial Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) Starter Guide
- 10 Things that make Ubuntu a Neophyte’s Distribution
- Creating DVD Movie Discs with Linux
- Adobe Photoshop CS2 on Ubuntu - 8 steps!
- Ext2 IFS for Windows - Let windows read the unix Filesystems!
- Using GPRS on uBuntu
- Ultimate Ubuntu eye-candy with Xgl and Compiz
- How to triple-boot Windows XP, Vista, and Ubuntu
Good article =).I didn’t try Ubuntu yet. I do have the disc (got it from IT fair i think), but I’m too lazy to try it on my pc. Is it really good? I mean, better than windoze in terms of performance and efficiency? Sorry if i ask too much though, since i never tried linux before.
Fird: Honestly, if you want to “play around” you can try downloading the latest (ubuntu 6.10), burn it into a CD and boot into it. You will immediately enter ubuntu’s “Live CD” (the whole OS loads and functions!) - this way you can fiddle with the OS to a certain extent without messing up your current installation in the hard disk. I strongly agree a dual-boot setup for the beginning of the transition period though.
Oh and if you play games, you can either do it like how I did - leave windows there and only boot into it for gaming sessions, or you can completely scrap the idea of using Linux. But for what I do everyday though - heavy surfing, chatting, IRC, some graphic editing, HTML and downloading (BT) it is very good! It’s not something that is ready for an easy switch yet, but Linux today is way way better and caters to more audience than it was in 2002 (this is the last time I ever fiddle with it)!
For gaming, try Cedega. It works better than Wine.
Fird: Yeah, I know. Except that it isn’t really free :(
I’ve used Ubuntu, for the past 4-5 months. Yup, it’s damn cool, plus, actually they mailed the Ubuntu CD directly to my house! So, no need of downloading and burning anything for me. Just that, now I seldomly boot into Ubuntu since most of my tools to do my work (ie. IBM Websphere, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Fireworks) runs only under Windows. But then, yup, maybe one day people will use Ubuntu instead of Windows.
Fird: Haha yeah! I ordered the 10-cd pack, so I can poison people around :p (they’re gonna hate me for sure).
I’ve been using Ubuntu since breezy badger release for my old Pentium 3 box. Main reason why i choose this distro is because of it’s Synaptic Package Manager where installing stuff is a “breeze” ( and of course, packages.ubuntu.com made my life easier too ).
It’s good. It’s fast. But not planning to use linux as my main OS for now.
PS: But I always play around and experiment light stuffs with the server. Hehehehe.
Fird: That’s what amazes me about Linux. You could install xfce desktop (as opposed to gnome) on older machines and they would work as rapidly as the modern ones, without having to sacrifice more recent technologies and securities. What irks me about using Windows is that you have to install (and *cough* buy) it first, and at the end of the Windows Setup, you are best with notepad, mspaint and wordpad with Internet explorer. Can’t do much. You *still* need to install a bunch more stuff to get everything you need (and to make sure things you don’t need like porn dialer, viruses and spywares are not installed). The last time I formatted my Windows, took me almost a whole day setting up things - and I am still not happy at the end of day 1.
On the contrary, I was up and running with ubuntu within an hour of installation. I’m too impressed.