Linux......Come of age!!!!!

Dread

Dear all,

I'm sure the question of the Linux operating system Vs Microsoft Windows has been brought up on this forum in the past but if not i'll try to enlighten you from my experiences. Firstly I'm not a techie, I'm basically a fumbler and poker, I have fumbled with and poked PC's and software to destruction in the past which is what most of us do at one time or another so this is written from a practical users perspective, I don't care too much what the details are, if it works and I can use it easily then it's good enough for me.

Linux is a Unix based operating system (OS) as opposed to the MS (Microsoft) DOS based system Windows has evolved from, and for all the techies out there, I know 2000, XP and Vista have pretty well evolved from NT but I'm not going to be pedantic here, the majority of people don't care what the difference is. Suffice it to say that Unix is, I believe, a much more reliable OS than either DOS or Windows of any flavour being that Unix was fundamentally developed within a commercial environment and Windows was cobbled together for the consumer market.

About 7 or 8 years ago I had a laptop that ran Windows 98, I loaded on Windows 2000 (I borrowed a CD to do it so thereby turned myself into a Pirate.......aaar Jim Lad) which was reasonable as I could use all the Win 98 drivers for my various hardware including my pcmcia WiFi card......yes WiFi's been about that long! Everything was reasonabl as far as Windows went albeit a bit slow but I still had to worry about viruses, hackers, re booting windows every few hours and having to either continue to use stolen software, pay a fortune to buy a licence or use some ocassionally dodgy Shareware (there is a lot of good shareware though).

I knew about Linux so sent off for a Distribution known as Mandriva (it was Mandrake then but changed it's name) and I think I paid £20 or so for 8 CD's with the OS and a ton of free software. I tried it but it required a basic knowledge of programming which I didn't have and it never really ran properly.

Move on about 5 years and I decided to try again. this time with a Distribution called Ubuntu. I'll explain here that as far as I can understand there is a basic operating system called Linux which various organisations add functionality to by adding, for example, a nice mouse operated system instead of having to type in a certain code to get anything done and in most cases adding support for certain hardware like DVD's, video and sound cards etc. So you get Mandriva Linux or Ubuntu Linux, Debian Linux, Suse Linux etc. the list is endless.

This time I downloaded Ubuntu version 6 from their web site for NOTHING (they also sent me a free disk) burned it to a CD and booted up my then fairly new Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop. To my complete surprise virtually everything worked like a charm, I didn't have to do much at all, unfortunatly to get my wireless working I had to go through the rigmarole of programming........once again kicked into touch.

About two weeks ago Windows basically ground to a halt and I was resigned to having to re load it but as I had backed up my files (arn't I just too smug..LOL) I thought I would look at Linux again, so off to the Ubuntu site again and downloaded version 8.04 beta, burned it to CD and booted it directly from the CD, if you just want to try Linux most Distributions allow you to boot from the CD without disturbing your Windows installation, if you don't like it just take out the CD and re boot windows as normal.

I was skeptical but astonished when I booted up Ubuntu and EVERYTHING on my laptop actually worked!......and I mean everything, bluetooth, internal WiFi, video, sound, even the scroller on the mouse......the lot. What's more, when I decided to actually install it onto the Hard Disk all I did was plug in the ethernet cable from my broadband modem, Ubuntu immediatly detected it, connected to the Ubuntu web site and downloaded over 400 updates which took about 20 minutes. Whilst booting it loaded up OpenOffice, an MS Office compatible software suite with word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing etc. programs, an MS Outlook like email, calendar and contact suite, Firefox web browser and tons of others. Whats more it has a little console you open when you need a new bit of software, you search for what you want from thousands of titles and siply download it ABSOLOUTLY FREE!

I thought the whole deal was too good to be true so I decided to try it on a 6 year old Toshiba Satellite 1800 I had been given. It was so slow with Windows XP it was terrible to use, kept crashing, hanging, you name it despite me forking out for a 256 Meg RAM chip to bring it up to 512 Meg of RAM. I loaded Ubuntu in the same way and it was just as easy but I couldnt get the proper screen resoloution, I was peering into a tiny screen but from experience I know that Toshiba seem to use peculiar hardware so wasn't really too surprised. Not to be beaten I tried some of the other Distributions, Debian, supported the video but nothing else worked, the same with Suse and then I tried Mandriva again. Voila.........loaded it up and everyting with the exception of my pcmcia WiFi card worked. I spent about an hour or so searching via google for the correct driver, followed the simple instructions to install it and Mandriva did the rest, installed and configured it, all I had to do was re boot and put in my WEP security code.....Bingo.

As with Ubuntu I can have Mandriva automatically download and install thousands of bits of software and I dont have to mess about with, store or lose piles of CD's that are necessary with Windows. My exposure to viruses is extremely limited as is my need to worry about malware, adware, spyware etc. My Ferrari runs like a dream (always wanted to say that) and my Toshiba is brilliant, it doesn,t crash, it has hung but I was asking it to do 5 or 6 things at once. When something did crash I got a little message telling me a certain bit of software had stopped running........that was it, the machine continued to work normally and I didn't have to re boot it.

The down side? Well, this is the really difficult bit, after some 17 years of using Windows it's a pain in the pimple to learn where things are again and it makes you realise that we rememember more than we think and that a supposedly logical progression through steps to operate a program is mostly remembered from experience rather that the 'intuitive' nature of the software. However, after a week I was pretty well there, I could network all the PC's in the house without a problem, much easier than Windows. Another week on and I'm used to the menu's and am finding most things as easily as I did with Windows.

So there you go. If your a student, on a limited income, want to resurrect an old PC, want to get a cheap PC or just like the idea of ditching Windows then get Linux! You will never look back.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Microsoft, after all without Bill Gates I don't think we would be nearly as far on with communicating over the internet but I do object to having to buy a licence for Windows that costs a fortune and exposes you to criminal prosecution if you let someone else use that disk. I understand the reasons for copyright but when there's a credible alternative why should we bother risking prosecution, very unlikely with an individual but nevertheless possible.

Hope this helps or inspires someone, sorry it's such a tome.

BillScarab

So basically you have Linux running on a couple of machines and you like it?

You say you don't dislike Microsoft but describe Windows as being 'cobbled' together and how on earth does running Windows expose anyone to the risk of criminal prosecution?

capn_phil68

Hi,

I am weening myself off MS by using openoffice which is great and going to set my next laptop up as dual boot with Ubuntu :-)

A fab os for older hardware is puppy linux which absolutely flies even on stuff you would otherwise throw away.

[Deleted User]

At university I had to use a combination of Windows XP and Red Hat Linux for programming. I could never gel with Linux for a variety of reasons and would always fall back on XP. I actually found Linux to be more unstable than my XP installation was.

Fast forward to now. I've tried Ubuntu and I could never see myself using it, nor recommending it to people to use. Don't get me wrong, Linux is a fantastic operating system for running on servers, and can be fun for the hobbiest and 'power users', but it's not matured enough to be of any competition to Windows. It's still dragging it's heels on Joe Public, hardware support is still hit and miss.

Most people who use Windows I assume will be getting it preinstalled with their machines, and there's hundreds of guides how to get XP running as fast as it can. It doesn't take a switch to a new operating system to maximise the performance of the hardware.

Students can also get MS software free if their College/University is enrolled in MSDN:AA. At university I had the entire back catalogue of MS Products that I could download for free. If that's not available you can buy the Student editions for not much money at all.

It's a dangerous thing to recommend someone switches to Linux since it's a learning curve and if something goes wrong, the help is often difficult to find if you don't know how to explain what is happening or what you have done if you don't know.

hubris

It doesn't take a switch to a new operating system to maximise the performance of the hardware.

I think it often does. I've made old computers usable again by installing Linux on them (Ubuntu, BTW). I had tried XP on these, but they were so much slower than the default Linux installation. Linux also does not need to run anti-virus software. Anti virus software running on Windows is one of the factors that slows it down (as is well covered on this forum).

Schools are being encouraged by the open source community and green campaigners, to save themselves money by not ditching their old hardware, but to install Linux and open source software.

Students can also get MS software free if their College/University is enrolled in MSDN:AA. At university I had the entire back catalogue of MS Products that I could download for free. If that's not available you can buy the Student editions for not much money at all.

Do these students pay tuition fees? MS do not provide software to organisations for free. Remember that some of the money we pay that goes to schools, hospitals, universities and the like, does go to pay for proprietary software providers like MS. How much better would it be if we used more open source software, and this money instead went to sports equipment, music equipment, more teaching staff, or lower taxes/tuition fees?

I think Linux (Ubuntu anyway) is ready for the desktop.

roguebrogue

My OH worships Linux.

He uses it on his PC at home (I prefer my mac thank you very much!).

And his job is a Linux engineer type thing (I believe that's the official title!)

Linux is definately on the up if you ask me...

culpepper

Ive got Ubuntu linux on one machine and XP on the other plus teen puppy linux on an external HD.
I do like ububntu linux but it isnt compatible with all the hardware I have (printer and scanner)so XP is still useful.
That is quite along post above Dread, Why dont you do a review of the distro you are using and post it up on ciao and get paid a little bit for the effort.

superscaper

hubris wrote: »

Do these students pay tuition fees? MS do not provide software to organisations for free.

The Dreamspark programme from Microsoft offers software completely free. Not to mention that things like Office 2007 Ultimate being sold for £39 is not only very cheap but hasn't been subsidised by any organisation, and same goes for the likes of software4students.

Dread

From BillScarab - "You say you don't dislike Microsoft but describe Windows as being 'cobbled' together and how on earth does running Windows expose anyone to the risk of criminal prosecution?"

Bill, either I didn't explain myself clearly enough in which case I apologise, or you didn't read my post properly so I'll try again: If you beg, borrow or steal a copy of Windows anything, not just the OS, which is being used on another machine you are in breach of copyright laws and open to prosecution because the licence is specific to one machine so if it's running on two you are cheating Bill Gates out of a few hundred quid.

As for the "cobbled" together software, MS Windows was hastily written to combat the threat of the vastly superior and much more user friendly Apple Macs which didn't require a DOS command line. The original Windows was a simple layer over DOS and was full of bugs and security issues particularly with the forthcoming Internet revoloution. Win 95 replaced it and had a registry to help improve security. Win 98 was also hastily introduced as security was becoming an overriding consideration but they were both basically still written over DOS. Win NT was introduced, I think around the time of 95 but was for the industry only as it wasn't user friendly at all. Win 2000 was introduced then XP and now Longhorn as it was codenamed but released as Vista. I think that pretty well covers the 'cobbled' bit as each version of Windows was hastily followed by a Service Release and in XP's case it made security worse and they had to release Service Pack 2.

I don't have anything against it other than it is driving a constant need for upgraded machines and we are all ending up with PC's cluttering up the loft/garage/shed. I have 2 laptops in the loft and my kids machines are creaking under XP so what option do I have when Microsoft withdraw support for XP.......I shell out several hundred pounds for a new Windows machine including the licence for software or I start using a free, perfectly acceptable OS like Mandrive or Ubuntu Linux.

I'll repeat what I said that had it not been for Windows we would probably not be communicating over the internet yet as we would either be using hugely expensive Macs or fiddling about with a DOS command line. Which is a grudging respect for what Microsoft has done for us.

be-alright.......... I would be interested to know what version of Ubuntu you used as accusing 8.04, which has it's official release tomorrow I think, as "fun for the hobbiest and 'power users', but it's not matured enough to be of any competition to Windows" is an incredible statement to make in the face of my experience over the past two weeks. I installedan OS from one download which required nothing more than a broadband connection to install and configure a laptop without any intervention from me other than typing in security and email settings, can you find me a Windows version that can do that because I can't. So what operating system is dragging its heels, My Ferrari came with a variety of driver CD's as did my Toshiba and if I try to load Windows on either of them I would get nowhere without them. As for guides to get XP running quickly........on a 6 year old machine???.....talk sense. As hubris said, switch off anti virus software and it will run faster but who in their right mind would do that?

Hopefully now that your out of University and in the real world having to pay for software you will begin to realise what a boon Linux is and if you care to try some of the more recent Linux Distro's you will find there is scant need for a command line so you may well be able to get on with it. I have tried Red Hat and it's not in the least bit user friendly and designed primarily for the expert so it's no wonder you didn't get on with it.

As far as peripheral hardware support is concerned, my pcmcia WiFi card was dealt with automatically by Mandrake as soon as I put the firmware in a folder and selected it in the normal graphical way Windows users would recognise, the difference is Mandrake didn't continue to ask me stupid questions, it just went off and installed it, re boot and that was it working. It also provides support for my Fuji Finepix 9500 camera and the model is less than a year old. I would concede that support for the very latest printers, scanners etc. may not be there yet but more manufacturers are including Linux drivers with their products. Few of us really need the very latest colour laser printer so I would bet drivers are available for the vast majority of hardware thats more than 6 months to a year old. Having said that go here http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/suplist.shtml and you will find a range of drivers specific to HP all in one printers and this is the site you are directed to from the HP site.

As for support....have you ever tried to contact Microsoft for support? Of course the alternative is get your mate, who knows about computers, round to poke around with it or send it to your local computer shop and get ripped off in exactly the same way you would if you had Windows go wrong.

Like I said, I'm not a techie but I have built PC's for friends and family because Windows needed upgrading not the hardware. Next time I'll save them a fortune by installing Linux, probably Mandrake as it looks and feels very similar to Windows, on their old machine and get them to buy a new mouse, keyboard and screen instead to make it all feel new.

superscaper

Personally I think Linux has a long way to go yet. It's fun to play around with (especially Ubuntu) but there isn't enough hardware support and nowhere near enough software apps which in the end just makes the experience frustrating. If there's one thing that certainly feels cobbled together it's trying to find open source alternatives to apps that work perfectly well under Windows. Even my copy of Office there doesn't seem to be any good alternatives to all the programs.

isofa

As much as I like the idea, no distro of Linux comes close to the quality feel of Mac OS X and Windows XP (I won't mention Vista), that coupled together with available applications I use day to day, everything from Adobe CS2 and 3 suites, to Office, database systems, web and development.

I agree that older computers can really benefit from Linux though. And Ubuntu is neat.

It's an alternative, and I've played around with it, but I agree with superscaper, it's got a long way to go.