My life in Linux

Moving on up

2011-09-30T14:17:00.002+01:00

THIS BLOG HAS NOW MOVED TO:

www.sjnewbs.co.uk

ALL POSTS AND INFO HAVE BEEN MOVED AND FUTURE POSTS WILL BE MADE ON THE NEW BLOG.

THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING

All in one

2011-08-30T19:43:00.002+01:00

Mini Post - Printers and Scanners

After half an hour of Googling and grumbling, fruitlessly trying to get my Epson Stylus DX8400 to scan to my netbook, I came a across a small goldmine of Epson drivers and software for Linux. If you have a photo printer or scanner and have yet to find a driver to get it to talk to your Linux (or other operating system) computer, have a look through.

http://avasys.jp/eng/linux_driver/

There are RPMs and .deb packages available as well as source files so its well worth trying to save yourself some trouble and having a look here if you get stuck.

Happy printing/scanning.

Linux rebirth

2011-08-23T12:32:00.008+01:00

After the best part of 6 months without a post, I am happy to report that my life in Linux has undergone some what of a regeneration. Like Dr Who I am going to take on a new shape and face some new foes, as well as some old ones I'm sure. This new era began around a month ago when I was contacted by a recruitment company who had previously arranged an interview for me for a help desk role which, sadly I was unsuccessful for. However, they kept my details and a slightly different role had arisen as a trainee systems administrator for the web hosting arm of a media company. Long story short, I went for it, got offered the job that day and have spent the last 10 days on a crash course system administration journey. The best part of it all? I am now working almost exclusively in Linux in one form or another. Fedora, Red Hat and Centos are all used for servers and desktop machines and my knowledge has been truly tested as a lot of the work is done through the command line.

Fedora 15 is installed on the computer I am using day to day and I have to admit that I have been very impressed with the stability and flexibility of the system as a whole. Not only that, the KDE environment that I am using does provide some very helpful utilities and good looking effects. One of my favourite programs is Kjots which was introduced to me by a very knowledgeable system administrator and friend who told me at the time that I would soon find it invaluable. He was not wrong. It is like a virtual notepad but enables you to keep several notebooks for different topics and title pages, highlight sections and saves it all for you automatically. Another useful tip in Fedora (and possibly other Linux systems - I don't have any others to test right now) is to highlight some text that you want and then click your mouse-wheel where you want to post it. Like copy and paste but just a highlight and drop. Handy for remembering lines of commands when skipping through a file system.

LibreOffice has replaced OpenOffice for reasons that I am not going to go into. They are more or less like for like and Libre hasn't faltered for anything I have needed so far. Another useful utility is Knotes which places "post-it" style notes on your desktop to get you to remember to buy milk or restart your machine. You can send them to other systems on your network, set alarms, print them and email them to name but a few functions.

I found the system settings utility a bit cumbersome at times but once you work out where the settings you want are hidden it can be easier to navigate with the search box provided. Compatibility with Firefox, Thunderbird and Dropbox help you to feel quite at home and Chrome can also be installed although I have yet to get round to this.

The desktop effects give the whole thing a nice shiny veneer so my advice would be if you can spare the processing power, enable them and have a play. Wobbly windows is my personal favourite.

I will be reporting back over the next few weeks with some more helpful hints as well as some Linux system reviews if I can squeeze them in. In the meantime, happy hunting.

The iPhone Verdict + Ubuntu 10.10

2011-02-22T12:55:00.010Z

Having been very kindly loaned an iPhone for a week, I have been impressed by many of its features but I remain sceptical of certain aspects and will be returning it to its original owner. iTunes remains one of my biggest hang-ups about all Apple products and the inability of the creators to see that not everyone will want to use one piece of software for all their media needs. Being unable to use simple drag and drop out of the box is a big loss and the past week has only cemented my Hero's place in my pocket.
After days of updating, package downloading and other fiddling, I am sad to say that I have been unsuccessful in my quest to get the iPhone to talk to a Linux system. Linux Mint simply wouldn't recognise that I had even plugged anything in to any "known working" USB ports and even when I retreated to the relative safety of Ubuntu, there were still some connection issues using the iPhone/iPod friendly 10.10 Maverick Meerkat release. There are several articles on the Ubuntu website about getting your iPhone working with various media players but even after sifting through the appropriate packages and updating the system over and over again, I still had no joy. Whether you can get this working or not, it isn't exactly plug and play and there isn't anyone stepping forward from Apple with an answer. If you don't want to use/cant use iTunes, they don't want to know.

On the up side, this test has given me the chance to look at the latest release of Ubuntu (10.10) and I have to say that I am impressed. The Live CD booted quickly and the desktop looks very smooth and professional. Not massively different to previous versions, but there have been some small improvements. When dropped into my usual Windows laptop, it discovered and configured all the hardware and was connected to the Internet in no time. Its also very sociable with the ability to incorporate your MSN or Facebook chat into your desktop via the Ubuntu button in the top right of the desktop.

The road test on the new Ubuntu continues and I will soon be venturing into the world of the netbook which will be exclusively Linux. But which one?

Dear Apple. I own two computers. What's the beef?

2011-02-17T17:41:00.005Z

Day two of iPhone testing comes in two sections: Sync with a second computer and use an iPhone on Linux. Both tasks are somewhat achievable with my current phone using HTC sync on Windows machines and mounting the phone memory and memory card as removable devices in Linux. I still have yet to master contacts and calendar syncing to a phone in Linux but I can at least exchange music, photos and videos between the phone and computer.

Having installed iTunes on my home (Windows) computer, I plugged in the phone and it was discovered without a problem. Going into the sync screen was where the problems started. If I navigated to the "apps" tab and ticked the box to sync these in the next sync. A synchronisation anywhere else would involve two way traffic. Clearly not the case here as the apps I had downloaded at work and put onto the phone would be deleted if I synced the phone away from the work computer. The same story on the photos, music, ringtones, contacts, calendar and pretty much anything else you might need to share between two computers. Why would you keep your whole music collection at work and why would you keep your work calendar and contacts at home? Is it so unbelievable in the 21st century that people might have more than one computer?

Clearly you can get around this by syncing only certain things on certain machines. For example, contacts and calendar at home and music and photos at work. But for me, if you make a phone that is as good as the iPhone is, why wouldn't you allow people to sync their files without the risk of deleting everything each time? You also cant access the phone via My Computer, as I guess this would be a way around having to use iTunes. Being able to simply drag and drop file on the Hero is one of the most useful features as my phone has doubled up as an emergency makeshift flash drive on more than one occasion. So continues my severe disliking of iTunes.

The second section of testing, after several botched attempts, has been postponed to the weekend when I have more time to fiddle repositories and software versions. I am reliably informed by the Ubuntu website that the 10.10 release is fully compatible with iProducts but since I stopped using Ubuntu at version 10.04 I didn't have an up to date system to test on. I will report back when success has been achieved.

Back on the net and out of the comfort zone

2011-02-16T15:13:00.010Z

After a few months of limited Internet access and other general obstacles, I am returning to the blogosphere with a small dose of real world testing. Before you read on I have a small confession, this entry is only very loosely Linux based. Allow me to explain;

Ever since the release of the first iPhone, I have had a real issue with the apparent need to tether yourself to one computer and one iTunes account. ITunes remains one of my least favourite pieces of software to date. Its bulky, slow, unintuitive and unfortunately, it is one of only a few ways to put anything on your Apple product. For the Linux users out there, iTunes is not really an option but there are some options according my Googling results and I will be giving these a once over later this week. In the meantime, having steered clear of the iPhone for many years due to my disliking of iTunes, I thought it would be very closed minded of me to form a negative opinion of these products without having actually used one in the real world and giving it a chance to prove its worth. Luckily my boss had a spare iPhone 3G in stock following an upgrade so over the next week I will be putting my HTC Hero to one side and going over to the dark side. Now, as for a Linux link, the iPhone's IOS is loosely based around Mac OS X which is a type of Unix-like operating system, just like any Linux distro. So whilst Mac OS X and IOS are not strictly open-source, they do share some similarities with Linux. Plus it gives me a chance to compare this to Android which is based around a modified Linux system and at the same time I can see if it is possible to use your iPhone on a Linux operating system.

Initial Impressions: Everything about the iPhone is designed to be smooth, from the feel of the handset to the transitions and menu navigation. I am not breaking any ground here, this particular model has been around for many years and has been reviewed billions of times. And yet, despite its age, it still feels modern and quick enough to handle new apps and tasks. I think this is a good illustration of the fact that Apple had this kind of handset nailed at an early stage and only recently have some of the other smartphone players begun to give it a good run for its money (HTC Desire HD, Samsung Galaxy S and Google Nexus S to name but a few). I don't think I could ever argue that this is not a good phone. 24 hours into full use and I have been impressed. It is as easy to use as I have always been told and is well up to any task that I have been able to throw at it so far.

Gripes: iTunes! First and foremost, you cant install iTunes on Linux. No help from the guys at Apple here, just a few web solutions about running it in WINE, which isn't ideal. As a result, I installed on my work computer. It took a little while to install and then went about converting all of my media files which also took a while. Once all that was done and I plugged in the phone, I then had to set about getting the sync organised with what I did and didn't want to go on my iPhone. For the sake of time, I un-ticked all my music, chose a couple of artists on the music tab and just told it to get my contacts from Outlook as well as the calendar. All fine so far.

The next gripe comes in the form of the cable. Or to be specific, the plug and ports that Apple use. I have taken my Hero to peoples houses who own a Blackberry or a sat-nav that have the same charger or USB cable and have been able to charge my phone. If I ever made a permanent swap to an "i-product", I would probably take a cable or charger with me everywhere because even though they are popular, I wouldn't like to assume that I could get the right cable wherever I am. As a side note, the battery is also pretty poor but I am putting that down to the age of the handset as well as some heavy app usage in the last day or so.

I was going to run a test to see what happened when I plugged the phone into another Windows computer with iTunes on after work today, but neglected to bring the i-cable home with me so that test will have to wait. I have been informed by some that a sync is possible on another computer but you have to choose different things to sync e.g: Contacts and calendar from work PC and Music from home PC. This remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the test continues. Its good, but not flawless...

"Mint to Xbox... come in Xbox"

2010-10-30T15:39:00.003+01:00

Having installed a fresh new hard drive, getting Mint up and running and getting my media files back on place, I felt it was time to get some other members of the tech household involved. An Xbox 360 (or a Playstation 3 for that matter) can be used to stream your music, photos and videos to your TV via your home network. This can be achieved via your wireless Internet connection or via a wired Ethernet network and even over your home's power lines if you have the correct gear. The Xbox has been a bit redundant lately as my free time that can be spent loafing on the sofa giving the thumbs a good workout has been decreasing for some time. So to make it feel loved again, I have hooked it up to the network, given the software an update and relatively simply hooked it up to a Windows Media Centre capable laptop as an extender. Now, I know that Windows doesn't usually feature in this blog however, Xbox is Microsoft's baby and as a result the compatibility with Windows computers and Media Centre is not something that you can avoid. In about 15 minutes, I was playing a video that was stored on a Windows Laptop on my living room TV. This involved generating a code on the Xbox and pumping that into Media Centre as an extender. More or less the whole process. 15 is generous as I spent a few minutes configuring the sharing in Windows 7's Homegroup feature.

The idea here is that the Windows machine gives me a benchmark for the Linux equivalents on ease of set-up and compatibility. There are a wealth of articles out there on streaming to your console and I have plumped to test some of the popular ones, starting with XBMC. Actually that is a slight lie, I started by seeing if I would be able to access a folder that I share over the network between Mint and Windows using a simple Samba Server utility. This did not work and although I can happily share from computer to computer, the Xbox couldn’t quite handle this. And so we turn to XBMC.

XBMC (formerly known as Xbox Media Centre – see what they've done there!) is an Open-Source utility that as well as running on Linux, can also be used on MacOS and Windows as well as having its own Linux Distribution version so you can install it on a purely media computer or run it from a Live CD. So pretty much anyone, anywhere can use XBMC no matter their situation. It is very versatile and can handle a huge range of media types and formats. You can get it here www.xbmc.org by heading to the downloads then Linux and following the instructions for Ubuntu. Leave the “compile from source” option to those with the knowledge and time to do so. I wont copy the instructions over as they are super easy to follow and involve 4 or 5 terminal commands to get up and running. Installation is quick and easy – a good start.

Open up your menu and fire up XBMC and you are greeted with a nice media centre menu which is easy to navigate with just a keyboard but mouse can also be used. As a test I navigated to where my videos are kept and hit play. No problems here although sound seemed to be slightly ahead of the video. Tried pausing and restarting but no dice. None the less, I powered up the Xbox and it couldn't find anything. Back to the XBMC settings and had to enable the “share video and music using UPnP” option in the Network options under the System menu. Back to the Xbox and hey presto, XBMC server shows up but after selecting that, no media files show up in the next screen. Back to XBMC again and after right clicking a video file and selecting “Manually add to library”, it then shows up on the Xbox. Took a few seconds for the video to start playing but there was no loss in picture quality and the sound problem didn’t seem to be showing here. Clearly this is an issue on the computer end, and after a bit of Googling this was more or less confirmed as I had assumed as an issue with the graphics card. After trying a few fixes and loosing patience, I took the fact that I could stream to the Xbox as a victory and set out in search of an alternative. Before we leave here though, worth bearing in mind that XBMC has to be running on the computer you are streaming from. This means that you not only need to go and manually tun the computer on but have to boot up and start XBMC. Or leave it on and running all the time!

PS3 Media Server was the next victim, despite the name! A bit of preparation work involved but I am happy to say another easy and quick set-up. Go to your main menu and load up Package Manager. You will need to install the packages for ffmpeg, mplayer and mencoder. This is as easy as typing their name in the search box and ticking Install then apply. Head over to http://ps3mediaserver.blogspot.com and download the latest version. You need to extract the files to an appropriate location, (the Home\Downloads or \Documents folders will do) and then double click PMS.sh. You then get the option to Run in Terminal, Display, Cancel or Run, the last of which is the good option here. The status window greets you and will have a big warning triangle if you are using an Xbox like me. This is only because you aren’t using a Playstation so nothing to worry about. In the tabs across the top there is an option for Navigation/Share Settings which you need to go into and add the folders you want to share. After this you will need to hit the Restart HTTP Server button in the middle of the top menu and this is the computer side done. The Xbox found the server no problems and after a few loading screens between navigation pages I was able to play the videos with no problems at all. Even better was the fact that you can then close the PMS window on your Linux machine and it will keep running in the background. All you need to do now is go to your main menu, view all programs and go to Startup Applications and manually add PMS.sh to run at startup. Now all you need is to switch on, log in if required and you are away. PS3 seems to run efficiently and is easy to install and get working, which are all good things for Linux novices.

The third option that I had planned to test was a program called Fuppes, however after an hour of failed installations, errors and generally getting quite hacked off with the whole thing, I have decided that if it cant be installed that easily then it cant make the list. I apologise in advance to all who use Fuppes without a problem as most forums seem to say that it is OK. Several attempts in different directories and after installing and reinstalling the necessary packages it refused to work so I am happy to put this one down as a win for Linux over my knowledge. I have decided to console myself by watching a film via PS3 with a smug “In your face Fuppes” look on my face.

All in all, PS3 was easy to install, use and configure so it has earned its place on my Mint system and I hope it is the beginning of a glittering streaming partnership with the Xbox.

Until next time, Happy Linuxing.

Short break and a clean slate

2010-10-16T17:11:00.001+01:00

Following a few weeks of hardware tinkering and some hair pulling, I now have a fresh new hard drive up and running along side the originals which has inspired me to do a ground up system reconstruct. The more I have played with Linux and added extra features or software, the more I think, “If I had a complete melt down, how easily could I get a new system up and running the way I like it”. Happily there are some quick answers to this from a preparation point of view. Linux Mint, which remains my system of choice to date, comes with a few handy “end of the world” features. The first of which is a general backup tool to back up the contents of your Home folder. This folder is the most important when it comes to all your personal files and settings so its always a good idea to keep an up to date back up of this folder somewhere. If you're really safety conscious, keep it at a friend or family members house just in case your house burns down taking with it the digital and original copies of your family photo album. Depending on how much you have, stick it on a USB drive or external hard drive. (Both of which should be in your arsenal if your in any way interested in computers/data backup).

The other handy tool is AptOnCD which makes a note of all the packages you have installed and can be exported to USB or CD so that when you get your new system up and running, you simply dump the list in and the Software Manager will simply download all those packages again, assuming you haven’t added any extra repositories. If you did add some of your own to get hold of something such as Handbrake, you will need to add the appropriate repositories in the software sources menu in the control panel and then the software manager will be able to find the package. This is a god send if you are a bit of a software junkie and cant remember exactly what you had last time.

Taking the time to back these elements up regularly will help you if you are ever caught short or suffer a catastrophe. In fact data and system backups are amongst the most important parts of using any computer system, Linux or otherwise.

So on the basis that you have your backups in place, if like me you need to do a bit of housekeeping and perhaps clear the decks or even just get your partitions in order before you go installing, there is no better place to start than PartedMagic. I have mentioned this system/utility before but this time I'm going a bit deeper. Even if you aren’t planning on breaking your system any time soon, get a copy PaertedMagic and burn yourself a CD. You will not be disappointed and if you ever get stuck with anything and cant boot or access your system, this ultra useful Linux distribution will swoop to your rescue. It comes bundled with tools for testing, backup, disk cloning and cleaning and so many more features I haven't even needed to look into... yet! It is also a full blooded Linux distro so if you just need to get on the net and look something up then it can handle this too. The utility I am really interested in here is Erase Disk which completely blanks your hard drives and gives you a clean slate to build your new system on. There are about 4 options for erasing the data on your disk and as far as I can see they all have the same outcome. The difference seems to be that one uses the disks own “I am 100% blank” command to wipe it and the other methods manually go through and set all the data on the disk to 0. After erasing all the data you will need to create a new partition and in order to do this you will need to make a new partition table so that the hard drive knows its way around itself. This might seem odd but that is how hard drives work so it has to be done. Luckily a version if Gparted, which you should be familiar with by now, is included so that we can make a new table and create nice shiny new partitions. Good times. Unless you have any further need for it, you can shut down and relinquish PartedMagic of its duties until the next disaster. On to the installation. Choose your weapon, slap in the live CD/DVD/USB and get installing!

After you get your system installed and booted, its just a case of running the same tools you used to backup but this time click the restore option. If you are using a system other than Mint, Debian based systems I'm sure would be able to use the same tools. Other than that perhaps consider using PartedMagic on a regular basis to keep a copy of your system image as your backup. Just an idea.

Interesting and ever so handy side note: PM also has a built in Grub tool to restore your bootloader. This in itself is worth its weight in gold if like me you have fiddled with boot options when you are testing different distos. Thank the creators of PM for this blogs continuance and the restoration of my faith in all things Linux. Next time I will be hooking up my Xbox to the network and looking at media streamers and how easy they are to set up and use. Until then Linux fans. Happy Linuxing.

Open Mind, OpenSuse.

2010-08-30T21:46:00.002+01:00

OpenSuse is a Linux distro that forms the foundations for a commercial product by Novell. Suse Linux Enterprise is the professional business version but OpenSuse itself remains as free and easy to use as any other distro, according to their website. It is advertised as a system for beginners, experienced users and ultra-geeks and on the basis that nearly everyone can fit into one of those categories, this should be a pleasant experience. My live DVD booted within 2 minutes and the Gnome desktop looks slightly Linux Mint like at first glance. This is shattered by the odd layout of the start menu which is unlike any other system I have used. You get 3 tabs – Applications, Documents and Places. A click on any of these brings up a selection box of some recently used or popular choices and to view any more than that a separate pop out window is required. Seems odd to have to launch this window every time you need something from your extended menu but I will keep my mind as open as possible. I later discovered that a more normal Gnome style menu can be added by Right clicking the task bar and selecting “Add to Panel”. As is the norm, Installation short-cut on the desktop so onwards and upwards.

License Agreement greets you to the installation so a tick of the “Agree” box later and you're under way. Set your keyboard layout and time zone and choose where to install then onto setting up a user. YaST (the installer) will then take you to a summary which gives you a chance to fiddle some settings like bootloaders etc. As I am installing along side my Mint system, I have been using the Grub bootloader in Mint to boot to my test systems so here I have opted not to install Grub. One last idiot check on the settings in the summary box and hit “Install”.

Installation took 24 minutes in total to get back to a desktop and the testing starts here. Wired internet working fine and no surprises that the wireless card has not been installed. Using YaST I did perform a hardware probe and it turns out that the computer can see the card but cant use it so I assume this is down to drivers or compatibility issues.

No out of the box support for MP3 or WMA audio files and MWV video file didn’t play either. Forum posts for fixing this were a bit hit and miss but did eventually find some helpful articles from some clever people. Firing up YaST from the control centre and looking up the codecs you need in “Package Search” is easy enough and you just need to tick them off and install. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts I did manage to get the codecs installed and found that you will also need to add some non-standard repositories which again can be found with a search through the forums. The easiest site to follow was www.opensuse-guide.org which as a step by step guide to getting yourself up and running. Codecs in particular are easiest with their method. For some strange reason Banshee refused to play video or audio files no matter what I did but with many other players on offer I get these working elsewhere.

All usual suspects are present including Firefox, OpenOffice and GIMP. Evolution is also present to give Outlook the boot and Totem is handling movies and DVDs. Banshee is your media centre and Flash and Java are ready to roll for your web site applications. YaST holds they key to all important settings and utilities to find software from the repositories to download. Worth a note is the skin on OpenOffice in Suse. It doesn’t look drastically different just slightly more refined than on other versions. Excellent work here. The desktop itself is fairly drab and uneventful but some people like it that way and it does keep things simple and clutter free.

As requested in readers comments, printing has been added to this test and I am pleased to say that Suse passed the test with vivid flying colours. Connecting my Epson Stylus Photo R340 via USB fired up a printer configuation utility which told me it couldn’t find a driver. I was then asked to choose my printer from a list and a driver was then chosen form me. A test page was printed and printing from OpenOffice was fine also. Partial success with other peripherals. I connected my mobile phone via USB and in Mass Storage mode the computer loaded the memory card and phone memory as usual as a mounted drive. Connecting in phone mode did nothing and no application I could find could bring it to life. No drivers for Suse available from Samsung for my phone either so no joy here. External hard drive and Creative media player both worked fine.

Suse packs some handy apps like Cheese webcam booth, Pidgin and many other helpful little gadgets. All in all, it is a well rounded system but it can be a bit awkward at times. For example the unexplainable non-playback in Banshee and how little I could find out about why it was so useless. With the help of the suggested start-up guide above, the system is perfectly usable but is not as easy or pleasurable as Ubuntu or Mint. It seems to set things as default that you probably wouldn't choose if you were given the choice. Which often means fiddling around or Googling for a workaround for some things.

Next time around I will be testing Arch Linux which according to DistroWatch is an independently developed system so I am hoping for something different to revitalise my hunt for a Ubuntu or Mint replacement. Until next time, happy Linuxing.

"Is it a PC?" "Is it a Linux?"... "No its PCLinuxOS"

2010-08-07T16:12:00.001+01:00

PCLinuxOS 2010

Booting the live DVD initially didn’t work but the boot menu does give the option of a safe graphics mode also known as VESA. This got the ball rolling and a good looking Gnome desktop followed. Similar in looks to Mandriva but with a massive menu. Seriously there are tons of applications included here and this is down to PCLinuxOS being aimed for easy use and compatibility with everything. Clicking the Install icon will ask you for a password which I thought was a bit strange however I guessed at Root and it seemed to work fine. The standard formatting questions follow and the install begins. The install process wont let you go without a bootloader so if you have one in place, make sure you don't install over it and make your other systems un-bootable. Its not a pretty road back if that happens!

Once you negotiate where you want it and the install has finished, booting up takes you through the user creation settings and pumping the relevant information and passwords in then gets you to a log in screen and a desktop. All working fine so far and on to the testing. Bit of a whistle stop tour this time as I seem to be going over the same old features and programs in most of these popular systems.

OpenOffice and and Firefox are present as I have come to expect. OpenOffice has to be downloaded so you will need an internet connection before you stick this on a PC without one. Pidgin and Thunderbird are also on the line up for messaging and emails/calendar. Rhythmbox and Mplayer check in for the media and MP3 and WMA play without a hitch. WMV videos play no problems but MP4 and M4V videos don't seem to want to have any sound on first play. But opening in Gnomes Mplayer instead of Totem for some reason brings the sound back. PCLOS also packs a handy video converter to help you take your videos with you on your media player and there is also a program called Floola which has iPod support. As I don’t have one (its a long boring story) I cant test this but it is something I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Synaptic package manager is on hand to look after the installing of new packages and software. Handy if you need extra software to get something you want to work and don't know how to get the appropriate stuff working.

Killer feature: Pretty much “plug and play”. You can drop this in and complete any task that you would normally be able to do on any other system. Features a lot of software and some useful utilities like MBR Restore to help you fix booting problems with hard drives. Looks a bit dated and unprofessional at times and is a bit backwards to use at first.

The possible reason for all the systems I have been testing being very similar is that wherever possible I have been plumping for a Gnome desktop and this brings with it a clutch of programs like Mplayer. In future tests I will be looking to broaden all our horizons by looking to some other desktop environments and to step out of the comfortable norm with some weird and wonderful creations.

Small B side to this entry in the blog - Parted Magic.

Came across this when I was looking for some Linux tools to fix a computer which refused to boot and it is a small, lightweight and yet feature packed distribution. I recommend having a look and familiarizing yourself with it so in the event that you get to a computer that you cant boot or whatever the problem, you can leap to the rescue. It will fit onto a DVD or CD and can be put onto a USB to boot.

Looking ahead to the next system on the hit list, OpenSuse is a system that I know a bit about and is the system I was told to try before any other. The man who introduced me to the world of Linux said that Suse was an excellent place to start and it was only by coming across Distrowatch's website and discovering Ubuntu that I didn't pursue Suse any further than a quick play on the live DVD. Anyway, Suse is next. Happy Linuxing.

Man Driver - Mandriva Linux

2010-07-31T12:13:00.003+01:00

Mandriva is different to the other systems I have tested so far in that it is based on... well its based on itself. Whilst the majority of the other popular distros tested are Debian based, Mandriva is just an up to date version of Mandrake which is what this system was first called when released in 1998. Anyway enough history, how good is it today?

Live DVD boots up to a desktop in about 5 minutes. It does ask a few questions along the way to help customise the live desktop slightly which is a nice touch. These include keyboard layout, time zone and preferred language as well as weather or not you want desktop effects so that the live CD can give you an accurate feel for the system and you can choose to keep things as basic as you want.

Those of you who have tried other desktop environments might be disappointed that the standard option here is Gnome but for me that is a solid choice and I have no complaints. The other main competitor (KDE) and possibly lesser know LXDE are catered for but these are options which can be selected later. Moving on, installation icon on the desktop so lets waste no more time.

Usual question to start, where you want your system to live on the hard drive. Gone for a clean install this time just to keep my testing drive clean and tidy. Formatting takes place and then the install begins. Installation took about 10 minutes then a restart and some loading screens later and you are presented with the user creation stage. Then once you have chosen a user and passwords you are asked if you want to register your system. I opted for No as chances are I will be installing over it in a matter of days/weeks. You can if you like the system. With all that out of the way, we are back at the desktop. You may notice an Upgrade icon on the desktop and think “whats that all about?”. Well Mandriva offer a paid version which comes with some extra bells and whistles and some rights protected codecs built in so if you are a serious user and you really really feel like you should be paying someone for having this much non-Windows fun then be my guest!

Testing:

Internet: Wired as is becoming the standard was a success and you guessed it, wireless was a failure. On an interesting side note, I got the Windows driver for my wireless card installed on Linux Mint and it now works like a charm. This Windows Driver mode would be a useful feature on more systems!

Browser test: I have re-branded the Facebook upload test because uploading things to Fbook has changed so it doesn't use plug-ins. Instead I have plumped for a much more generic test to asses the standard browser that comes bundled with the system. In the case of Mandriva, they play it safe with Firefox (the numero uno of open-source browsers) and it performs well. It can handle any Java or flash pages with ease so passing this test 100%.

Video test: Disappointed here with the lack of support for DVDs from such a well rounded system. Had to locate some codecs and plug-ins from the Mandriva “install & remove software” manager but did eventually get an M4V video file playing... but with no sound. That might get a tad annoying when you are trying to enjoy a film. WMV file played fine including sound so if you have a large collection of videos then this is one to bear in mind. Interesting side note is that when you try and play a file that Mandriva doesn’t have a codec for, it does offer you a link to buy the codecs from Fluendo. Quite why you would chose to do this over installing another Linux or scouring Google for the codecs is beyond me.

*For those that dont know, codecs are a small program/piece of code which tell the computer how to decode audio and video and basically get them to play. This is my basic understanding of how things work codec wise.

Music test: Both MP3 and WMA files play in the file browser as with some other distros but the main media player is Rhythmbox which comes with Mint and Ubuntu amongst others. Capable player, can handle play lists and organising your media by artist or album etc.

Letter test: OpenOffice all present and correct. Reading this week about some other office suites that are Linux friendly and whilst there are alternatives (Koffice for example) none seem to be as slick and problem free as the OpenOffice boys. Hats off to them!

Photo test: Gimp and F-spot are installed as standard and having seen Gimp on a few systems now, I feel duty bound to see how far this piece of software can go. The answer is much further than any normal home user would probably ever need to go. Layers and filters abound to cater for some reasonable graphic creations and photo editing. Great to just have a play and fiddle your pictures. Experts claim that it rivals Adobe's Photoshop but I remain sceptical. However, how many of us need all the jazz of the full blown Photoshop when we just want to tinker with a few holiday snaps to get rid of your sun burn or take your huge spot out of the Friday night pictures before they make it to Facebook? The answer I imagine is not many.

Email & Instant message test: Empathy Instant Message Client is the MSN style messenger here and it does the job without too much fuss. Most major messaging types supported and brought under one roof. Email is handled by Evolution and as we have seen before, if you find yourself lost in the wilderness with just an Internet connection and Evolution, you can definitely email for help. Evolution gets you to set up an account on start and holds your hand from there.

Burn test: Brasero provides the know how to get yourself burning away into the distance with as many ISOs as you want and it can also handle music, DVD and data discs.

Bootable USB test: No built in support for this and no easy to find tools in the Software Manager. Not to say that its impossible, just not easy.

Killer feature: No real stand out feature on Mandriva. Software Manager is OK at best. It needs a bit more organisation and needs to make things slightly easier to find. Short of that, it comes with all the right programs to make it a very well rounded and usable system.

Verdict on Mandriva is that its the best non-Debian based system I have tried in these tests. Its got all the right ingredients to keep most people happy other than some support for DVDs or an easy way of getting them to work without hours of fiddling and downloading codecs.

Next time out I will be giving PCLinuxOS a thorough dressing down and a once over. Maybe even a twice over. Never can be too sure. Until then, happy Linuxing.

Mepis Mepis Mepis

2010-07-31T12:09:00.003+01:00

The next system to step up to the plate is Mepis and the version I have selected is Simply Mepis 8.5. This is the most recent release of this Debian based system. Having done some homework, Mepis is aimed at both home and professional users and being Debian based (much like Mint and Ubuntu) I am expecting good things from this system.

Live DVD boots quickly and gives you a few options for booting. Basically there is normal, no frills, diagnostic and a few others, so of course I went for normal and let the party begin. In just over 2 minutes I was presented with a log in screen which helpfully realises you are in the demo and gives you the user name and password at the top of the screen – bearing in mind my troubles with Sabayon this was greatly appreciated. A minute or so later and the desktop is ready to roll. Mepis only comes with a KDE desktop which is fine but my personal preference would be Gnome. However, the KDE desktop on offer here is well laid out and easy to understand what's what. MepisInstall icon on the desktop and everything seems to be functioning so time to plough on.

Usual questions to start, select your partition and let the install wizard check its happy with your selected destination and format if necessary. Once it is happy, that's it. I was expecting a few more screens with options but this seems to not be the case for Mepis. The installation took about 10 minutes and then you are asked to make a user and set the passwords. Restart and remove the DVD and a refresh of Grub and Mepis is ready to boot. All going well so far except for the fact that when I booted to Mepis, it ran through pages of code loading the system but then stopped. I restarted and tried booting again. Same problem. For some reason or another, after sifting through all the code it had been spouting, Mepis thought it had been installed on a different hard drive and therefore couldn’t boot itself. Quite how it managed this I'm not sure but either way, a second installation would be in order.

Here is the part where I will cut the long story really short: Mepis refused to boot on every install I tried and I tried it as many different ways as I could using different drives and partitions and it just didn't like my set-up. I have tried it on a separate machine and it runs fine and I am banking on the face that the Live DVD runs OK to assume that it would be fine on any other normal computer. Perhaps just not to many drives or partitions to confuse it! Anyway, I will conduct as many tests as I can with what I can get working.

Internet: Works fine as expected on wires and wireless was non existent so still no joy with my wireless card on this system.

Upload a photo: Mepis passes the Facebook photo test but I will be looking to find something more challenging following the changes to the upload process. Either way, it passes the current test.

Videos: WMV and MP4 videos handled by KDE's KMplayer without having to download any updates or codecs to impressed here. DVD not such a success as when you slam your disc into the drive , you would expect one of the media players to start or offer to play the DVD. Mepis, no such luck. Next to the menu button in the bottom left corner there is a removable devices/storage button showing you options for DVDs, CDs and flash drives. Clicking the DVD in here brings up a menu which I thought would have an option to play but only featured, rip, copy or open to view files options. A bit disappointed here.

Music: MP3 and WMA files both play in Kmplayer the same as the videos. No real ITunes or Windows Media player style players here as standard and its also worth pointing out that files in the file browser are all single click to launch. By now I was getting aggravated by opening every file twice because most other systems would require a double click to open.

Letter: OpenOffice is present and as discussed on previous tests, this is the standard level on many Linux systems.

Photos: With a click, photos open in Gwenview which has some basic features for cropping, resizing and red eye which is handy. No real in depth solution provided as standard but as a Debian variant, software repositories are available to get some extras.

Email & Instant Message – KDE provides Kmail which gets you to set up a mailbox right at the start. Kmail is basic but can handle everyday email tasks and is easy to use. No built in calendar so not up to Outlook standards but plenty for the average home user. Instant messages are sent through Kopete which works like any other messaging program available. Add your favourite accounts from MSN or Google and you're away.

Burning: K3b is KDE's built in burning utility and it can handle burning ISOs and blanking DVD/CDs and has features for audio and data discs too.

Bootable USB: No support for this built into Mepis and as I couldn’t get the system to run from the hard drive, I wasn't able to test out the package manager software as it refused to run on the live DVD. Fail on this front but no to say that it cant be done with some third party software.

Killer Feature: Hard to find one really. Mepis is solid and the DVD runs nicely but the not wanting to boot from the hard drive aspect worries me that if it doesn't work for me then its likely to not work somewhere else. Several nice touches like gadgets and widgets on the desktop but nothing that really stands out.

Final verdict on Mepis is that its ...OK. It works for some and not others and has made me appreciate what KDE has to offer in terms of built in software. Not blown away but it looks nice and does most tasks reasonably well.

Next in the queue is Mandriva so happy Linuxing until next time.

Sabayon - no, I dont know what it means!

2010-07-04T12:11:00.004+01:00

Live DVD is in and not a great start. When presented with a log in screen on boot, I assumed that there would be a default account that would be something simple like User and no password or something like that. No such luck. So I consulted the net and found that the log in info is supposedly sabayonuser and sabayonuser as the password. This didnt work either and neither did logging in as the root user. Further scouring of the net later, I found that root has no password so eventually I got into a workable desktop. As a default the DVD booted into a GNOME desktop but I did take the opportunity to have a tinker with some of the less familiar desktops. Fluxbox is weird. You basically run programs that all have a separate box but not in a way that is at all comfortable. Give it a go so you can say you gave it a try but it seems like an aquired taste. There are also XBMC and Sabayon Media Centre options which are media centre desktops. XBMC looks good and would be really handy on a purely media computer. As a desktop, not so much.

Installation is very customisable and there are many options for what you do and don't include in your system. It seemed like there where a lot of steps and once it got going the installation took reboot later and I'm back at a boot menu. Because of where I had installed to this time around I had to log back into Mint and run Update-Grub command as I didn't install a boot loader this time around. This way the Mint Grub can handle all entries. Booting for the first time was not such a success as the screen just went blank after all the appropriate files had been loaded. And even in safe mode the best I could muster was a log in via command prompt. Some kind of error getting Gnome to work so easy option was to re-install and try again.

A few cups of tea and some patience later I got a booting system to begin testing:

Connect to the Internet: Wired – Success and Sabayon comes with Firefox so full marks here.

Wireless: Not a lot of the Linuxes I am testing like the wireless card I have installed so I have given up expecting this to work. Sabayon is no better any any of the others here.

Upload a photo to Facebook: Helpfully, Facebook have now changed how you upload photos to their website so there is now no Java uploader involved and you just launch a browser ans choose your photos. It is a lot easier but doesn’t really stretch the browsers capability. On this occasion, as it comes with Firefox , Sabayon performed no worse than my W7 laptop so its a pass.

Watch Video: No built in DVD support however Sabayon does come with an update program built in so fired it up and had quick search in the downloads for some codecs to play DVDs. Update program (Called Sulphur in Sabayon) is not a patch on Mint and froze a couple of times when I was trying to install some codecs. The upshot was that I couldn't get a DVD to play propertly. However, M4V and WMV video files did play so you could use the DVD::RIP utility to put your DVDs on the computer. More on this in Killer Feature.

Listen to music – MP3 and WMA support was no problem and were happy to play in the file browser as well as Audacious. Not a full blown media player but capable enough.

Write a letter – OpenOffice 3.1 is included and is really the benchmark for office applications on Linux. Can handle MS Word documents and can even save files as Doc files for your Windows bound chums!

Edit a photo: Sabayon bundles Gimp 2.6. Now Gimp is one of my huge gripes with Linux. I am reliably informed that Gimp is on par with most basic features from Photoshop and is a hugely capable piece of photo editing software. Personally, I find it difficult to use and a bit “Windows 95”-esq in its appearance. The bottom line is, it does the job and can do most things the regular user would ever need to do to a photo.

Email and Instant message: Sabayon includes the ever popular Evolution and Pidgin for emails, calendar management and instant messaging. Both programs are easy to use even for a novice and anyone who has ever used Outlook, Windows Mail, Hotmail or MSN will be right at home.

Burn a Linux ISO: Brasero can handle this with no problems and can even blank your disks if you have Re-Writeable DVDs or CDs.

USB Distro?: Getting Sabayon on a USB flash drive is do-able. There is no built in feature for this but the support guys do provide instruction on their website.

Killer feature: XBMC media centre. This feature is pretty awesome. If you have ever used Windows Media Centre, you get the basic idea. Designed to be used on a media centre PC hooked up to a TV and it does this really well. Everything is clearly laid out and easy to read from far away. Media support is across the board. Strangely, even DVDs play in XBMC so I cant quite figure out why Sabayon itself cant do the same. Anyway, as a media centre, very good.

Sabayon on the whole is a very usable system. Not as slick as some of the bigger boys but certainly capable of handling itself in a scrap. Media support is a bit patchy but good enough and XBMC pulls it out of the bag and gives it a purpose and some edge.

Next entry in the Linux race is another one I know little about. Mepis seems to be hovering around the bottom of the top 10 so at the time of chosing my list it was in and it has since dropped out and back in a few times. None the less, Simply Mepis is my next port of call.

Double Mint choc-chip delight!

2010-06-28T12:23:00.003+01:00

Following the utter disappointment of Debian in the last test, I have selected a distro this time around that is well documented as one of the easiest linuxes to use - Linux Mint. "But Steve, isn't Mint a Debian variant just like Ubuntu?" I hear you ask. Well, yes it is. But Ubuntu and Mint take a base from debian and then build on it heavily and make it a million times easier to use and use a repository of software so that anyone on either distro can use the same programs.

As you all know, I'm a huge fan of Ubuntu and did try Mint briefly before. However, since then Mint has had a bit of a face lift and tummy tuck and added some new features so I was hopeful that this could finally rival my current King of the Linuxes. The mint website looks a bit basic but stick with it and get youself a shiny new ISO, burn it and stick it in. Away we go.

Booting the Live DVD brings up the usual menu. The options are kept limited here to Start Mint, Start in Safe Mode, Check Disk and Boot from Hard Disk. Booting into the desktop took a few minutes but brings everything up quickly once it had the wallpaper loaded. The grey looks very similar to the new Ubuntu theme but they go heavy on the green everywhere else in Mint. The desktop will look familiar to anyone who has used Ubuntu but that is to be expected with a spin off distro. Besides, if you told a lady she looks a little bit like Kiera Knightly, I’m sure she would be at least a bit chuffed. Install short-cut is on the desktop.

Installation was simple and fairly quick. Grub also found my Ubuntu installation on the other hard drive and fiddled Grub accordingly. It is evident here that Mint and Ubuntu are designed with each other in mind and are more than happy to sit side by side on a computer. Anyway, on to the testing:

Connect to the Internet – Wired – Pass, as expected with Ubuntu gubbins doing the work. The update manager began waving at me almost instantly, asking me if it could download some new updates.

Wireless – there is an interesting feature in Mint called Windows Wireless Drivers where you can install drivers for wireless cards and run them in Mint. Very clever! Will report on this once I have located a driver and worked out what wireless card I have installed.

Upload a photo to Facebook – Huge success, straight out of the box. Navigated myself to the right page, after some loading the Java application started up and asked my permission to access the computer and away you go. Having Firefox on Mint really helps as Firefox is now one of the big players of web browsers and therefore compatibility would be one of their priorities (I assume).

Watch a DVD and WMV video – Huge thumbs up again on the DVD front. Plonk in the disk and you are away. WMV didn’t even cause a problem and bearing in mind how much bother I went to and still not even get these files to play in Debian, Mint just works straight out of the blocks.

Play and MP3 and WMA – Success and without even having to open the files themselves. Mint has a handy feature which lets you listen to music files just by putting the cursor over the file in your explorer window. No need for any kind of media player to open or load or anything. However, Mint does include as standard Rhythmbox media player although for some strange reason this is not set as the default player for music and a double click brings up GNOME’s Mplayer. Not a huge issue because either of these are more than capable but Rhythmbox is just a better all-round music player in my opinion.

Write a letter – OpenOffice opened up an existing word document without any problem and is more than capable of being your standard word processor. Ticks all the boxes here.

Edit a photo – F-Spot photo editor is really capable for most general picture tasks and includes red eye fixing and many useful tools. Also didn’t struggle with different formats such as JPEG and PNG.

Send an email and instant message – Thunderbird is the Mozilla equivalent of MS Outlook and it does the job. It’s not always as pretty as the MS software but then again, you haven’t paid the best part of £200 for it. Thunderbird can handle POP and IMAP email accounts and prompts you to set one up as soon as you fire it up. Instant messaging is handled by Pidgin and this handy little messenger can deal with loads of different messaging systems like MSN or AIM or Yahoo and even GoogleTalk. If you have ever used any of those programs themselves, you can use Pidgin. It’s that simple.

Burn a new ISO – Brasero CD/DVD burner is waiting in the wings to leap forward and solve this problem. Fire it up, click “Burn a CD/DVD image” and bam, found the blank DVD I had inserted, locate the ISO and you are made in the shade. Probably the most hassle free ISO burn in the world. Nice touch also it the progress meter in the form of a little CD icon which comes up in the notification area while it’s burning. Mostly pointless but I like that a lot.

Make a bootable USB of the distro – no problems here either. Mint comes with the same Startup Disk Creator that Ubuntu has so it’s more of the same here. Another useful tool I stumbled across though was APTonCD which is essentially a way of making a copy of all the packages you download to add to your Mint software so if you have to re-install or want all the same stuff on a new PC, you can just transfer it across. Genius!

Killer Feature – Super simplicity! Within minutes of installing I had arranged a few icons, installed some software. Plus I had switched on the desktop cube which is one of my all-time favourite Linux add-ons. Useless? Maybe but handy if you have a few windows open and you want to separate one from the others. Also (not that I condone this kind of behaviour!) it’s also useful if you are supposed to be working on something so you can have all your work open on one desktop and then with a flip you have another one with Facebook and some games open. Plus it looks so swish!

Mint also is compatible with the Ubuntu repository of software which is a bit like The App Store if you own an I-phone/pod. Pretty much anything you will ever need to accomplish any task is in there and can be easily downloaded and installed, all handled by the software manager. Plus Mint includes reviews by other users for their software so this takes it one up against its buntu brother. Quite why Ubuntu and Mint have this and Debian itself doesn’t ship with it is beyond me.

Overall, Mint is hugely capable and is well up to the challenge of its more popular brother. If anything, the simplicity of having codecs and software to handle your media built in is slightly better than in Ubuntu, which is why I get the impression that my media centre PC might just be converting to the way of the Mint. Love it, love it, love it.

Next issue, I'm going off piste to a system I have no knowledge of what so ever. Sabayon is the next victim.

Testing, testing... is this thing on?

2010-06-12T13:20:00.002+01:00

Its blog-o-clock and with this edition I'm starting a new wave of tests which will hopefully broaden all of our Linux based horizons. Here's the theory behind it:

My previous postings have remained fairly heavily based on Ubuntu and, while it is a great operating system and remains my favourite to date, just writing about how good one variant of Linux is was not what I had origainally set out to do. I have therefore consulted the top 10 Linux distros as shown on the listings at Distrowatch.com (the daddy of all Linux websites) and have downloaded the most recent ISO's of all of them. Week by week I will be testing them as fully as possible by installing them onto my spare hard drive and seeing how they work and how they can handle the day to day tasks that any Windows or Mac system can handle straight out of the box. I will be keeping additonal add-ons and software downloads to a minimum in order to see how these systems fair just using the software that comes bundled with it.

The top 10 at the time of writing and the first test is as follows:

Ubuntu 2348
Fedora 1612
Mint 1599
openSUSE 1215
PCLinuxOS 1104
Debian 1063
Mandriva 1048
Sabayon 845
Arch 838
MEPIS 728

The figures to the right of the names show how many hits that page has had that week so as you can see, Ubuntu is by far and away the most popular page here, which gives a hit to the fact that it is a hugely popular system. These figures do vary and are not a definitive top 10, but it does show where other users are going and is as close as you can get to a "most popular" rating for a distro.

To break with tradition, the first system in the firing line is number 6, Debian. "Number 6?" I hear you ask. Well, Ubuntu is a Debian variant and as I have done most of my testing so far using Ubuntu, I am eager to see if the parent of my favourite distro is any better or worse. So, on with the testing!

Debian 5.0

Booting from live DVD, first option of “Install” takes you through an old DOS style menu system. The instructions through this menu are reasonably clear although I was unsure when it came to re-partitioning my hard drives as there was to hint as to what was on which drive. Only because I knew that my Windows Vista drive was formatted in NTFS was I able to establish which hard drive I could overwrite. After telling Debian where it could live it does a final idiot check before writing to the hard drive and then begins loading the files.

The usual set up of setting a root password and then making a user account come next and then more loading of files. It then asks you if you want to load another DVD or use a mirror. I skipped these options as the DVD had only been burned form an ISO downloaded last week so in theory, the software on there should be more or less up to date. More loading then leads to a choice of what extras you want. This includes print servers, mail servers and ftp servers and many more options for some juicy extra bits to help set the computer to do such tasks. I plumped for plain old desktop environment and standard PC and hit continue but you can experiment here if you wish.

After some fiddling with where I wanted to install Grub (ended up having to put it in the Debian drive so now I have two different drives and a Grub bootloader on each – sort of multiple personality syndrome as neither one knows about the other!) and a restart later, I now have my log in screen and eventually a nice, blue Debian desktop.

Install took just under an hour and I can now get stuck in to some real world testing. Having used Ubuntu for some time now, I have collated a list of the most common tasks that any half decent Linux distro should be able to handle and I will be keeping an eye out for that killer feature.

Tests:

Connect to Internet
Upload a photo to Facebook
Watch a DVD and a WMV video file
Listen to an MP3 and MWA file
White a letter
Edit a photo
Send an email and instant message
Burn a new Linux ISO
Make a bootable USB of distro
Killer feature??

So here is how Debian fared in my out of the box tests. Minimal hunting for updates and downloading extra software. Just an install-and-see-how-it-gets-on type test.

Connect to the Internet – Wired connection worked like a charm and connected straight away. Wireless card not found but then again Ubuntu never liked it either!

Upload a photo to Facebook – not such a huge success on this front. Debian comes with Epiphany web browser which, whilst similar to Firefox, is not Firefox. Epiphany fell at this hurdle as soon as the upload page loads and asks you to click the brick to install an extra plug-in and the brick does nothing. Literally nothing and I couldn't find a Plug-ins option in any of the menus either. Debian also provides ICEWeasel which did ask to install an extra plug-in and fire up the pug-in installer but then told me to install manually. This leads me onto my next problem.

I got hold of the Java plug-in I needed but needed to install it to a specific folder on the hard drive. Tried opening up “Computer” to browse to the correct folder and it tried to start and then gave up. I did this several times before resorting to a restart to try and solve the problem. Being the first boot and all I thought I would cut it some slack. Following the restart I was able to browse around my file system and change the necessary properties for the file but actually getting the file to install was nigh on impossible, for me anyway. I followed as many instructions on the Java website as possible but to no avail. So I’m afraid to say that Debian fails the Facebook Photo test. Obviously in a real world situation, you can use the old-school uploader, but for testing purposes I have taken this out of the equation.

Play a DVD – Turns out this is a bit of a mine field as the majority of DVDs are copyrighted and therefore most Linuxes don’t ship with the codecs to play them. So after a bit of homework to find them on the net, I downloaded the file, did my best to try and install and still had no joy. I also found online that you can use Gstreamer tools to sort this problem but trying to get anything to actually install on Debian is appearing to be some kind of dark art. And worst of all there is no application to help you or point you in the right direction for these kind of tools. I can see why Ubuntu is the more popular system based on this alone.

Play music – Fail for the same reasons as DVD’s and sod all help from Debian to help someone who doesn’t know what they are doing.

Write a letter – One huge disappointment is the lack of OpenOffice. And yet again let down by my inability to get anything to install on Debian so having downloaded and followed instructions on the OO website on how to install, still no joy and worst of all there isn’t even an alternative program to turn to.

Edit a photo – a basic photo viewer is supplied but nothing in the way of any editing software. Epic fail on this front.

Send an email & Instant message – Evolution is Debian’s saving grace. Set up and sent an email in about 2 minutes. If you are familiar with MS Outlook then Evolution is nothing to worry about. If you know your POP or IMAP settings just pump them in and you’re away! Instant messaging much more of a struggle but not a total fail. The Debian forums suggest Ebuddy and other online based instant messengers which is a viable option without having to try and install anything.

Make bootable USB – Nothing in this line for Debian

Burn an ISO – There is a CD/DVD creator, but no option to do anything with an ISO so no way to burn yourself a new Linux to get rid of Debian!

Killer Feature – Unless you want to send an email, it’s completely useless for an average desktop user.

Verdict – Couldn’t get this off my computer quick enough. Looks are great but without a Software Centre style program or anything to help with installation and no codecs or plug-ins included, its more or less just a desktop. Plus, if you are browsing through files, the folder you select opens in a new window! So you can end up with 20 windows open just to see where you have been. Strange.

Debian left me wanting a lot more and I have looked at the ISO I downloaded just to make sure that I hadn't got a bare bone or basic system and I'm certain this was not the case.

Next time I will be turning back to a system I tried briefly before but could the new version change my opinion? Linux Mint here we come.

Pocket Rocket

2010-05-26T20:36:00.003+01:00

Having now had my Linux machine up and running for a good few months, I am at the stage where I find that I when people ask me whats to good about it, the best way to get the message across is to reach for my pocket and show them the USB drive I now carry attached to my keys at all times.

Its nothing flash. Just an old 4GB flash drive that had a case many moons ago but when that broke I chose to soldier on regardless for as long as it kept working. So now its about an inch of metal casing surrounding what I assume is the motherboard and the flash drive itself and that's it. But this tiny exterior is the home of the beast that is Ubuntu. It has always impressed me that something so small can contain all the technical know how to power and run (quite efficiently too I might add), a whole computer system. And the ability to create such a thing is no deep Internet secret discussed by "enthusiasts" on various questionable forums. Quite the opposite in fact. If you have a Ubuntu machine up and running (I'm sure I have seen this feature on other Linuxes as well), you have the technology! Simply go into your system menu, go into Administration and hit up Startup Disk Creator. This wizard holds your hand through the not-so-laborious 1 step task of making a startup disk. All you need is the ISO of the Linux you want to boot into, preferably for a Live CD version and then pick a flash drive to be your new best pal!

To give you some idea of how far this can go, I have installed and successfully run PuppyLinux from a 1GB SD card. Puppy is a bit different to Ubuntu but it is designed to be much smaller so will run super quick even on an old banger of a PC. Handy if you want to get some files off an old PC or fix up a broken computer that can't get into Windows.

My most recent project used the latest Ubuntu 10.04 ISO and this took up about 1.7 GB of my 4GB drive. This means that as well as having an entire operating system in my reach, I can still store files on it and have those with me too. So you can stick it in a friends computer, show them your holiday snaps, upload them to Facebook, type up your holiday diary and listen to some of your favourite music whilst doing so, all from your USB drive. Without harming or even booting into their Windows or Mac system. Because the latest version of Ubuntu is jammed with even more drivers right out of the box, chances are that it will be able to use SD card readers, wireless Internet and fingerprint readers and even bluetooth.

The only real necessity is that the host computer has to be able to boot from USB and I have found that the older the computer you go for, the less likely it is to be able to do so and in some cases, the less likely it is to even have a USB port. Although, lets face it, if anyone you know was still marching on with an old box from the early 90's with no USB's, introducing them to a whole new operating system would pretty much be a waste of your time. "Windows 95 will do me just fine" kind of attitude!

So there it is. Have a play. Seriously, if you have any grasp of any of my previous posts or have a Linux machine up and running, give it a go. And branch out to other Linuxes as well. Puppy comes highly recommended for this kind of thing.

Lastly, one foot note going back to my previous post about the settings I lost when I upgraded Ubuntu last. I googled and googled, there are some things you can keep and some things you cant and if you want to do it, its a long road. Most of the clever guys back up their Home folder and just reuse this on the new version.

Until next time Linux fans

Back in action but not for the right reason

2010-05-03T19:31:00.011+01:00

Well after a 2 month break from blogging, a routine update to my Ubuntu virtual machine led to this next entry on my Linux based ramblings. And before you read on Buntu fans, I must admit that its a bit of a gripe that has inspired me to put finger to key on this occasion! Let me set the scene;
On my W7 laptop, I run a VMWare Ubuntu 9.10 virtual machine which I fire up every now and again to utilise the music and photo editing software and browse the Internet etc. All was well in my world. Linux wasn't the be all and end all but I had everything set up the way I like it. Desktop, menu bar, applications; the list goes on. Nothing huge but lots of little settings and tweaks to my preferred setup. After a week or to of not using the machine, I thought "I'll just start it up and check for updates to keep things ticking over nicely and well oiled" - no harm there.
In doing so the update manager flashed up and informed me that there was a new version of Ubuntu out (10.04). This latest release is the new LTS form, which to my knowledge means Long Term Support, essentially meaning that this is the latest version and there will now be updates for this until 2013. All this seemed to be good news and without hesitation, I hit the update button. This is where the trouble started.

The update ticks through as you would expect and all seemed to be going ok when after an hour or so, the virtual machine restarted and booted to the new log in screen. New log in area looks good; slight face lift and the usual options for language and keyboard layout with accessibility options. Clicked my user account to log in and begun entering the password. But nothing happened. I tried the enter/return button after trying again. Nothing. Keyboard not happening at all. No problem, the mouse was working to I went on over to the accessibility options and selected the on-screen keyboard option. That then appeared and disappeared just as quick. I tried again and the same thing happened. Two restarts later and a bit of google-ing and I found I was not alone in this pickle. After a few more restarts and plugging in an external keyboard - to no avail - the on-screen keyboard started appearing and I could then log in. In the words of Borat, "Great Success!". Strange though that the keyboard then started working once I had got to the desktop. Then it went from bad to worse.

The intermittent keyboard I would be able to cope with for the few times I need to log using the on-screen keys. The fact that the update overwrote all the applications and settings I had installed really got my goat! My preferred media player, music editor and just about every desktop setting I had modified, gone. This really got me thinking as I thought, I have never had this problem with Windows. If I had to re-install all my favourite programs and applications and re-adjust all my settings every 6 months with a Windows system, I probably wouldn't update it when the new one rolled around.

However, after some more thought, I guess that when I wanted to upgrade from XP to Vista, I had to do a clean install then so would have lost everything. I have never done it but I would assume that this may well be the case with Vista to W7 as well. I think the reason that the Ubuntu update got to me so much was because Linux in general is so much more personal than Windows. There are so many features that you can customise and adjust that if you have to start again from scratch, it really makes me think weather or not I wanted to go through everything again knowing that in 6 months time, I'm going to want to upgrade again and start again.

I will be investigating this further and setting myself some homework on how not to loose all your settings and software, because if there's one thing I've learned from my adventures in Ubuntu, its that most of the time someone has had the same problem and someone much cleverer has solved it. For the time being though, my fingers seem a little singed by a careless upgrade and the rebuild of my new Buntu begins.

P.S: On the upside, I like the new look of Ubuntu 10.04 and the re-spin of Firefox looks great. Everything else has been given a new slickness too that makes the environment look a lot more like Mac OS X. Very professional and grown up looking.

Virtual Insanity

2010-02-25T14:13:00.009Z

After a small break to do some homework on where Linux is heading next, I have returned with some most excellent news. It is in fact possible to have your cake and eat it.

When it comes to operating systems, recent figures show that about 90% of the worlds computers are Windows based. Leaving Apple's MAC OS, Linux and a few others to fight it out over the remaining 10%. As you will have gathered from my previous posts, installing Linux carries with it lots of advantages but does have some down sides. One of the downsides that gets to me the most is the fact that you cant install Linux without installing Grub or an equivalent boot loader (or at least I cant find a way to do it having scoured Google and LinuxForums). It would seem that the Windows boot loader is meant for Windows and that's it. Tough cookies to all you others!

This limitation has prevented me from installing Ubuntu onto my new laptop which runs W7 and boots really quickly. I like that. It might seem trivial and unimportant to others but to me the whole point of getting a new laptop as opposed to keeping the old one ticking over is the speed. However, thanks to some further reading and looking into security bits and pieces (more on this another time), I have discovered the genius that is Virtual Machines. In a nutshell, a piece of software that can run one operating system inside another one. God bless the seriously clever bloke who came up with that. As far as I can make out the advantage of this is mainly for software or web designers who need to test their work on several different OSes and browsers and this means they can do it all from one PC with no reboots or complicated hard drive arrangements. Swish!

Microsoft (being the giant wagon jumper that it is) now offer their own version of this software called Virtual PC which you can download from their website here. I tried this first of all but found that its not really geared up for Linux and I didn't have the patience to fiddle until it worked. So in the end I plumped for VMare PLayer. You have to answer a few questions but its free and is much more accommodating for Linux (in my case Ubuntu) users. The process is reasonably simple to get up and running and in only a short time you have your own Linux desktop with which you can;

Minimise; to continue working on whatever else your doing in Windows or Mac.

Maximise; to make it look like you are using a normal Linux computer.

Customise; with whatever hardware that's connected to the host computer and tell the virtual machine what it can and cant have access to.

Share; by nominating folders that your virtual machine can access so you can get documents in and out.

For me this is the ideal scenario because Linux is there when I need it but isn't forcing me to slow down my booting by using Grub. Loving this alot. Its super easy to install and get rolling. Download youself an ISO of your faveourite Linux (I used Ubuntu 9 but in theory any Linux will do - I'm going to test some others since its so easy to do now), download VMware player and install that. Once you fire up VMware click "set up new Virtual Machine" and then browse to your Linux ISO in the first window, set up a user account in the next, name the virtual machine in the next and then the final window decides how much of your hard drive to allocate to the machine. The standard seems to be 20GB but the beauty of Linux is that you dont need anywhere near that much to run it. I have given about 15GB to mine which I had going spare but the minimum I would suggest is about 10GB to keep your system happy. Anyway, finish the wizard and VMw will begin its Easy Installer and get installing. The Linux install will then run through, once its finished it should try and boot up. I have done this a couple of times and VM may well say it needs to download some Linux bits but this seems to be normal. Once thats all done, its all systems go. Good times all round.

As I said above, Im going to try out some mor distros with this new toy and will report back with the findings. For the time being, happy play time Linux fans.

1 Month off - Situation Report

2010-01-21T19:43:00.012Z

Well Linux lovers its been a month since the last post and I think I should use this post as a bit of a confessional. Following the partial death and general geriatric nature of my old laptop, I felt it was time for an upgrade. So one trip to PC World and then Currys, I got my self bang up-to-date with a new HP Pavilion dm3 which, of course like every new laptop, came with Windows 7. As I hadn't really sampled the goods of 7 yet I thought this would be a good opportunity to compare the very latest Windows with the very latest (and still favourite) Linux, Ubuntu.

I would love to say that just like Vista, Microsoft has really missed the mark and it was full of bugs and costs a ridiculous amount of money. Sadly, this is not the case. Windows 7 is good. Seriously good. Its easy to use, looks great and takes up slightly less room than Vista, which is a bonus if you are going to do some Linux-ing. To be fair, with a new laptop with big memory and a new processor, it should be really good as that's the W7 target machine and Vista left Gates and Co pretty red faced so they have really put some thought into 7. A bit confused about the advertising for W7 as it highlights some of the more pointless features such as the snap feature where you drag one window to the left and it snaps to half the screen. Then dragging another window to the right snaps it to the other half, making comparing two windows easier. Brilliant! They have solved a problem that didn't really exist and at worst involved tabbing between windows. What a chore!

After a good few weeks of tinkering around in 7, I confess that I have yet to set up Ubuntu because I like the new Windows a lot. So far the laptop is booting in about 15 seconds start to finish. I love that. Bearing in mind that on the old laptop it was closer to a minute, on a good day. I know that doesn't sound like much, but an improvement none the less. So once I get Grub into the mix, its going to jack my boot time right back up, even booting to Windows. Not only this, but also having not yet invested in a new MP3 player, I am reluctant to install Ubuntu knowing full well that not one of the media players can handle synchronising my musing with my Creative X-Fi.

I have however brought some of my Linux life into 7 with me. OpenOffice is my new office suite of choice. Plus if you want Microsoft Office its an extra £100 ish which right now I cant find a reason to shell out. OO does everything MSO can do and its compatibility is unbeatable.

For the time being I have been booting to Linux with the Ubuntu flash drive I made from my last installation and until I need a program that Ubuntu needs to download, I'm happy to keep it on the flash. Its a real shame because Ubuntu is great but for as long as I can do things in Windows that I cant do there, I cant justify taking the hit on hard drive space and using Grub, which is my lease favourite thing about Linux.

On a positive note, I have been working on Linux Puppy to a point where I have stuck it onto an SD card. Linux Puppy is useful for fixing hard drive problems and has more applications than you can shake a stick at. And its the smallest Linux I have come across to date. Good times.
More fun to be had here I feel.

Come and have a go...Minty

2009-12-20T15:18:00.006Z

Having used Ubuntu for some time now, I am tempted to halt the testing and stick with it for ever! Its impressed me and continues to do so the more things I introduce it to. It has handled more or less everything I have to throw at it with ease and a very well thought out and well presented system.
To date I have only one quibble. My Creative Zen. The Rhythmbox media player cant seem to add more than about 5 files to it at a time without having to sit down for a rest! Tried to solve this by using some of the other media players available and the best I can find is Banshee for general music and video playback. Banshee does seem to be Rhythmbox based though so it cant really do any better when getting music onto the Zen.

From what I can gather, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux Distro to date. This is probably why there is so much software and support out there for it. My concern would be that with a less popular Linux, the compatibility and support would never be as comprehensive and you are left much more to your own devices. Which brings me back to my original point, whats the advantage of Windows? Well 90(ish)% of the worlds computers use it and the support and community is far beyond the dreams of any Linux distro. However, if you don't mind putting in some legwork and making a few mistakes along the way, Linux can reward you much more than any Windows system.

After a bit more homework, I have got myself a live CD for Linux Mint. This was originally a Ubuntu variant but has now branched out to form its own community and dedicated followers. It focuses on working straight out of the box and after booting to the CD, I can say that this is more or less this case. Wireless worked as with Ubuntu and screen resolution set itself perfectly.
After tinkering around a bit, I can see bits of Ubuntu that are familiar and Mint uses the same software sources so you can use the same stuff on both systems. This leaves me thinking, if you wanted everything that Linux Mint offers you, why wouldnt you just use Ubuntu? It seems strange that this variant only really offers you a bit more customization on the menu and layout but seems to be too similar to make a real difference. The Linux hardcore would probably shout me down on this and tell me about all the unique code in Mint and how its nothing like Ubuntu, but from a ordinary user level, I don't see it.

For the time being, Ubuntu is here to stay but folowing the purchase of a new laptop including Windows 7, can it compete with Bill Gates' latest offering?

Settled in nicely

2009-12-01T12:34:00.012Z

Last time out I had Ubuntu up and running and from the outset, I was very much liking what I saw. And I'm really pleased to say that everything got better from there. Not only did it run like a dream on the PC but I shoved the Live CD into my laptop and happily I was able to partition off a bit of my laptop hard drive and get Linux up and running on the there too. Bon temps as the French might say!

Now running Ubuntu for the past week or so, I have only been presented with an "oh no I cant do that" screen a couple of times. The first of which was when I was trying to set up my Hotmail. Ubuntu gives you Evolution Mail to cover your emails and calendar etc and with any server based emails, no problems. Work emails sorted. But there is no option to set up any Hotmail or GoogleMail type accounts. Not hugely impressive. Although I did find that there are extra apps from the Ubuntu software centre to check your Gmail for you.

The only other time I had any trouble was with the media player when importing music from the Windows partition. It doesn't like keeping media in the library that is on a different partition but seems to work fine once imported. I guess the solution is to either not have a Windows partition or keep your music on the Linux partition.

Other than these small hiccups, Ubuntu has been a real pleasure to use. It can do pretty much anything you can think of. The OpenOffice software is probably as close as you can get to Microsoft Office without loosing your house, money and entire family in court with Bill Gates. I have been using Ubuntu day to day to most normal computer tasks including syncing my media player, uploading photos from my camera to the net, word processing and browsing the web. The boot time is quicker, shut down time is alot quicker, the system has not frozen once and I can do everything I could do on a Windows PC and possibly more. The Ubuntu Software Centre seems to have a download for almost anything you could ever want to do from ripping CD's and DVD's (not that I condone the breaching of any copyrights) to a bible memorising application (still cant think why this is necessary but then it takes all sorts I guess).

Wireless worked a treat straight off the bat and after plugging in both my Creative X-Fi MP3 player and Kodak digital camera, not only did Ubuntu have drivers but it also made a suggestion as to what software I can use with this hard ware (very Windows Vista-esq).

Not sure if this is connected to Ubuntu in any way or weather or not it has any power management features but the battery on the old laptop seems to be dead well within an hour when left to its own devices. As I tend to spend most of my time running on mains power this is not a huge issue and is most likely down to the laptop being a bit old but I will be booting to Vista to see if the power management in there can offer anything better.

To sum up, Ubuntu is, in my opinion, a perfectly adequate replacement for Windows. Maybe not quite as polished and user friendly at first but very versatile and usable. Very useful for booting from a USB drive to repair or format computers should you ever need to. All in all, a very clean and tidy operating system.

Next time I will be looking at the results of the power tests and selecting the next distro to see if anyone can topple Ubuntu form the top spot and resident spot on my hard drive.

Ubuntu - The plot thickens

2009-11-21T13:46:00.012Z

After being left wanting a bit more by OpenSuse, I went back to the drawing board and selected a new distro to trial. The next system to put through its paces is Ubuntu.

Hit up ubuntu.com and just as before, you download the CD ISO image and burn it then bung it into your subject computer. No Surprises. Reboot and you get options to boot the live CD, check the installation media and of course, Install to your hard drive. Thought I would give the live CD a run out and stretch Ubuntu's legs a bit.

Live CD boots up pretty quickly and you are welcomed into a world of brown, beige and grey. Instantly you see the big difference is that the menu bar is at the top. The left hand side of your bar gives you three options: Applications, Places and System. These produce a drop down menu to your programs, main file folders (photos, documents, music, my computer etc) and system preferences and administration. The top right consists of the usual suspects: volume, network icon and time. And on the far right you have a power icon which gives you your options for logging off, shutting down and so on. Much as in OpenSuse, the applications are broken down into sections depending on function. The bundled soft ware includes:
Accessories:

Calculator
CD/DVD creator
Basic text editor
passwords and encryption keys options
screenshot taker

Games:

Mines (minesweeper type game)
Chess
Blackjack
Sudoku

Graphics:

F-Spot photo editor
Gimp graphics appliaction
OpenOffice Drawing

Internet:

Empathy Instant messenger
Evolution mail client
Firefox
Ubuntu one
Remote desktop viewer

Office:

OpenOffice Spreadsheet, presentation and word processor
Dictionary

Sound and Video;

Disk burner
Movie player
Rhythmbox music player.

The final part of this menu is Ubuntu software centre which is basically like the App Store on the iPhone but for your computer. Pages of software, free of charge, which enables you to do pretty much anything with your computer. These range from games to browsers to media players to pretty much anything you like. You can browse through on the live CD but to install you will need to install Ubuntu to your hard drive or at least it didn't work when I tried. However the system seemed to be running everything properly. Wireless Internet not functional yet but thought this may get rectified by installing and downloading updates via old cable connection.

This brings me nicely to the installation of Ubuntu. There is an option for this placed on your desktop in the live CD. The installation manager is much nicer and holds your hand a bit more when making changes to hard disks. The easiest option is to go with pretty much whatever it suggests and it will do all the hard work for you. It scanned and found that I had Vista installed and asked me if I would like to install them side by side or wipe the disk clean. Side by side seemed like a good idea for the time being and after a few more clicks, it gets itself under way.

Whilst in the live CD is is also possible to make a USB start up drive to install on netbooks or computers with no CD drive. As long as the computer you want to install on can boot from a USB drive, this is a pretty sensible option as its like carrying around a live CD but on a flash drive. This feature made me very happy when I realised I could run a whole operating system from a USB drive and thanks to the bundled partitioning tools and other software, would come in very handy when repairing computers in future. Good times!

Anyway, installation complete and reboot now done, first boot into Ubuntu is much the same as the CD. The bootloader, Grub 1.5 in this case bringing up options to boot to Ubuntu, Ubuntu recovery, memory test or Windows. This is by far the easiest method of making a dual boot system I have come across. Onwards into Ubuntu, log in with your newly created user and password and your in. Boot up very quick and painless and after hooking into the home network and downloading updates, even the wireless card worked.

Impressed with Ubuntu so far as it seems a bit better put together than Suse. Going to spend some time playing, testing and using day to day and will report the findings.

Open Suse-ame.

2009-11-14T11:17:00.011Z

Last time I had just finished installing Suse onto my PC and so far I have mixed feelings.

Good Stuff:

So lets say you ignore Linux altogether and plump for the new Windows 7. You install and need to write a letter to your local council complaining about the dustbin collection and "youths" hanging around outside your local Londis. What do you turn to? Microsoft office? Probably, but what if you don't get a reply for a few weeks and when you do get it, it just infuriates you further and you need to write another letter. Ah! Your trial of Office 2007 has run out and all your left with is Notepad. This is where OpenOffice jumps in and saves your day. OpenOffice is a 100% free word processor that is included with a lot of Linux systems. Better still if you needed to show the council how you feel in the form of a spreadsheet, a drawing or even a presentation, these are all included. Its worth noting that OpenOffice can be installed on Windows computers but it does come with the full version installed in Linux.

Other bundled software includes:

Two web browsers - not sure why you need two but two heads are better than one I suppose.

Amarok music player - easy to set up to get all the music off of my Windows hard drive and a nice little player. Worth noting that if you have music in WMA format, Amarok wont play it.

Media player - Kaffeine - cant seem to play DVD's in this version which is a bit of a let down.

Kopete chat - compatible with tons of chat programs including MSN.

DigiKam - photo viewer and editor - some useful features to fiddle colour, size and so on.

Many other little apps and even a few games.

The main thing you will have to get used to in Suse is one click. Windows is all about the double click for launching applications. In Suse all it takes is one and I quite like that. And in the case of the main menu, you don't need any clicks as the different tabs will switch to whichever tab your mouse is over. Liking this as well.

Other good stuff I like includes the fact that you have 4 desktops, each selectable from the launch bar next to the "start" button. This means if you are doing a lot of things all at once you can organise all your programs across many desktops.

Bad Stuff:

All set to take over the world with my new pal Suse but for the time being I am restricted by wires. Not only because I was forced to use my PC to test Suse but also because the wireless card I have in my PC doesn't seem to want to work with Linux at all. I have therefore resorted to getting all old school and plugging in to my home network. No huge deal at the moment but if I installed on my laptop I would need the wireless to work otherwise, lets face it, whats the point!

The way it names hard drives and folders is a bit backwards and sometimes confusing. You get used to us but if you have never used Linux before at all you might need some guidance at first. A few searches on the net are usually the remedy.

After having played with Suse for a week or so, I am left wanting a bit more and still looking for the wow factor to convince me to torch all my old XP disks!

Summary
OpenSuse is a decent enough system but lacks a certain slickness that any windows user would be accustomed to. Couldnt handle wireless internet no matter how hard I tried and is a bit clunky and hard to work with at times.

As a result, I have returned to my original test and selected another operating system to test - Ubuntu is my next victim.

Making the jump

2009-11-14T09:53:00.010Z

After many days of shouting at my laptop, I have decided to conduct this experiment on my desktop PC. Vista refused to let me use the 20GB of free space on my hard drive to make a nice new home for Linux and after several failed attempts to reorganise my laptops hard drive (several disk clean ups and defragments later!)the old PC is my new weapon of choice.

First things first, before you go anywhere near installing new stuff on anything, BACK UP! From many past experiences and probably tinkering with things far more than I should, this is the most important step. Find yourself a good external hard drive and it will be your best friend if it all goes south. Also if you are running XP or Vista it is a good idea to set a system restore point as well. Windows will probably have done this for you recently but it never hurts to make sure. This is a really easy way of reverting back to a working system without having to reinstall or anything drastic.

Right now the precautions are in place, lets get on with the good stuff! Stick your live CD in the drive and reboot. Chances are you will have a splash screen with the make of your computer come up when you first start up and usually this has a list of buttons you can press for different options at the bottom. These will be either Function buttons (F1, F2, F12 etc) or the Delete button. Look for the button to give you boot device options (on my Packard Bell its F8 but I can almost guarantee it will be a different one on any other make of PC or Laptop). Once that's appeared, choose to boot from your CD drive and Linux will then start up.

In OpenSuse which I have chosen, a menu appears giving you some options, the top one of which is to boot the live CD. Hit the enter button and the fun begins.

This is a benefit of Linux that I cant see from any other operating system. The ability to run the system, in place, on your computer, before you install it. That seems to me to make sense and its a great way to see if the Linux distro you have chosen will work for you before you go installing it. Although not all the distros will offer a live CD, most of the big names (OpenSuse, Ubuntu, Mint etc) will do.

So I now have a working Linux system to test out. At first glance, it doesn't look to different from what any computer user is used to. There's a task bar at the bottom, an "application launcher" button in the bottom left and all the usual suspects in the bottom right; Network connection, volume and of course, time.

Over the next few posts I'll be looking into the applications and programs bundled in with this system but for now I am going to crack straight on to installation. You on the other hand may want to have a nosey around and see whats what before installing and you could even build up a library of live Cd's and test them all out and pick out your favourites. Then again, most people have better things to do with their time!

OpenSuse presents you with the Desktop Folder which has links to the Firefox web browser and OpenOffice word processor but the one I'm interested in is the Install link. The first page is the usual License Agreement stuff and language selection then on to time zone choice. The Third page is where you chose where you want to install. It gives you a list of suggested partitions to install to but its not in the same kind of language as Windows would use. It refers to each hard drive as /dev/sda or sdb. After a bit of Google action on the laptop, this is just how Linux works. In Suse I chose "Create partition setup" which then means I can pick the hard drive I have created my Linux partition on and tell Linux to install to it. Then you make a user and set a password. The original password I put in was questioned by Suse as it was too simple. This is not something Windows has ever asked me about and is an interesting security feature. Lastly you get two idiot checks, one screen of all the settings for installation and one more just making sure you are happy to alter existing partitions etc. All looked fine so onward.

Follow the instructions regarding rebooting and taking out the CD and Linux then boots from your hard drive and your away! Log in with the user name and password and its as easy as that. Installation took about 10 minutes max. Much faster than I have ever been able to install XP or Vista.

Next post (after I have had a play!) will cover whats included in Suse and how to get things done.

Day 1 - Whats Linux?

2009-11-09T21:09:00.000Z

If like me you are a die hard Windows user, the thought of straying from the relative safety of your XP, Vista or Windows 7 environment might be a bit daunting and you will probably asking yourself, why make the switch?

The simple answer is, there is no one hard and fast reason to make the jump. There are lots of advantages to staying with Windows, along with the majority of the worlds computer users such as compatibility and a massive support network. You can pretty much drop any piece of hardware into a Windows system and it will call home, check for a driver and you're ready to roll in no time.

But the recent release of Windows 7 has left me wondering. Why pay £70 (for the basic upgrade version) when there are operating systems out there that are not only free but offer millions of different combinations of bundled software for whatever you need. Music production, software creation and specialised VoIP(voice over IP) versions to name but a few. But this then presents you with a whole new world of choices.

So this leads me to my experiment. Can a Windows junkie give up the habit and live with Linux without loosing functionality and maybe even do it all for free? In my experience, there's only one way to find out.

So lets start at the beginning: Linux - My discoveries so far

Linux comes in hundreds of different distributions (known as Distros). Each one is the creators own take on the operating system. The code for Linux is what is known as "open source" which means that most of the time, anyone who knows a bit about coding can get hold of the source code, open the bonnet and fiddle with whatever they like. They are all based around whats called the Linux Kernel which is the basic innards of the operating system and pretty much everything else is frills. You can get distros which are just command line systems and bear no resemblance to a modern desktop at all. These are all well and good of the hardcore Linux coders out there but I think for my first outing, I need something a bit more familiar.

Most of the popular distros offer a a graphical user interface to give you a desktop to make using the operating system easy. These will usually be in the form of GNOME or KDE or many others. As far as I can make out, most of the big names are offering GNOME at least. At this stage it seems not to make a difference which one you chose because it will only influence the background running. Perhaps there are compatibility issues later. Only time will tell!

Anyway, to cut a long story really short, I searched for "Linux distro chooser", found this test and plumped for OpenSuse. The quiz takes you through the important stuff like how much knowledge of Linux you have and how you plan to install etc. If you answer the questions in more or less the same way I did, you will get similar options. I get presented with Linux Mint, OpenSuse, Mandriva and Ubuntu. Visit the web links for whatever you get presented with and check through the features to see if that particular distro will do what you want. OpenSuse or Ubuntu seem to be a solid choice as they have lots of support available and both have what is known as a "Live CD" option.

A Live CD is essentially, an operating system that runs from a CD rather than your hard drive. This means you can run these systems from the CD without having to install them on to your computer. Once running from the CD, you then have the option to install to the hard drive if you want to.

At this point it is worth mentioning that there are many options for installing to an existing system and you will probably want to do some homework on a setup called Dual Boot which means you can keep Windows in play, just in case!
There are tons of articles on how to do this so Google is more than capable of handling that lesson. To give you an idea of how it might end up, I have partitioned off some of my main hard drive to install Linux onto.

After sorting hard drive space, I downloaded the OpenSuse Live CD ISO file, burnt it to a CD using the burning software that was included with my laptop when I bought it. Free software is out there if you don't have any. So now I have my Linux on CD ready to roll.

So, stuff I know so far:

Pick your Distro
Sort your hard drive
Burn your CD

Next step - Installing.