Techguy's Computer Corner

 Yesterday I was able to download and burn the ISO image file to a cd with no problems using the recommended Infra Recorder. I placed the CD into the drive of my computer  and made sure I changed my SONY External DVD burner to the first boot device and booted up to Linux. Linux will allow you to boot to the Ubuntu desktop just to see what it looks like without affecting your current operating system. I decided to start out by attempting to install Ubuntu on my 8 year old Dell GX110. It is a simple machine with a 1GHz P3 processor, 768 MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive. The sound, video and NIC adapters are integrated onto the systemboard. I was hoping because of its age and simplicity Linux would have some device driver support for this machine - I wasn't disappointed.

Upon booting to the Ubuntu desktop I clicked the install icon to start the installation process. After answering several simple questions like selecting your Country and Time Zone, keyboard layout, your desired username and password it took me to the disk partitioning portion of the install process. I decided to choose the Guided - use entire disk option since I was working with an empty drive. It created the partition and began the install process which took almost an hour. When it was finished I removed the cd from the drive and rebooted the computer. Although this particular machine runs Linux a little sluggish the desktop came up fine and right away I was notified there were 93 updates available. I chose to install these and these took about 30 mins. I was ready to take it for a drive.

 Right away I checked to see if I had an internet connection and much to my surprise I was able to get out on the internet. Ubuntu had support for my 3COM NIC. I am actually posting today using the Linux environment. My next test was to see if I could see my  network. I went to Places>Network and clicked on Windows Network, selected my workgroup and sure enough - I was able to see 3 other computers that were currently running on the network. I was able to access the shares and even launch files from them - cool, this was starting to look pretty good.

Because of the fact I'm a complete amatuer with Linux I started to poke around a bit to see if Linux had supported the rest of my hardware in this machine so I went to System>Hardware Information. It was layed out a little like Windows Device Manager and I saw a lot of the same things here as I do in DM. I wouldn't know a problem with a device in Linux if I saw one because I just don't know the environment yet. It appeared the sound, NIC and motherboard resources (PCI bridge, IDE controllers, USB controllers, etc.) were installed, but I don't know if I'm using a generic VGA driver because I don't see anything about my display adapter listed there, although the display looks fine.

After getting myself familiarized with Ubuntu I started to check out some of the apps included in the initial install. I also went to Add/Remove and downloaded for free quite a few more apps I thought might come in handy. One of those was a screen capture utility called KSnapshot. I use screen capture quite a bit for training and instructional purposes. I wanted to post some screen shots of the menus in Ubuntu but discovered a bug already in KSnapshot (at least I THINK it is). I am able to hit my PrintScreen key to capture the entire screen but when I want to capture the Applications, Places or System menus, the PrintScreen button does not invoke KSnapshot - bummer. Most of the applications I see here and that are also available for download give me the impression I am downloading from Download.com. Yes they are free but they have a Mickey Mouse look and feel to them, and my initial exposure to a couple of them tell me they don't have a lot of bells and whistles and are pretty straight forward. AbiWord word processor seems cool and you can save your work in different file formats like MS Word (.doc). One thing I would like to test is formulas in spreadsheets and special formatting in a Word doc to see if they will stay intact across both platforms. Maybe some day.

 I have not set up mail yet so I can't speak to that, but if the main reason why you have a computer is to browse the web, check email and do a little forum hopping, Linux could definitely be an alternative to Windows, and it's free. But wait, don't get too excited yet. I have some news I have to share with you in my next post that you will want to know before you take that leap.

 So to recap I will give Ubuntu the following grades for what I have seen so far. Keep in mind these are coming from a Linux user with just a few hours under his belt -

Installation - A+    Installation can't get much easier

Driver Support - A+    My Dell GX110 seems to be supported pretty well in Linux Ubuntu.

Navigation - A    Ubuntu is layed out very similar to Windows. The same windows controls are used (minimize, maximize and close) and the windows are designed almost exactly like you are used to in Windows. Everything seems to be neat and organized and arranged in 3 easy to follow menus.

Applications - C    Although it appears there are Linux apps that can do some of the same job functions we are used to in Windows their functionality seem limited, as well as the choices that are avaliable. A lot of applications are command line driven as well and need more than just a click of the mouse to get them to run.

 Customization - C+   Although you can customize the look and feel of Linux with different themes, fonts and visual effects it is much more limited than Windows is and IMO does not look as nice. When I tried to chose Extra in Visual Effects I got an error that said desktop affects could not be enabled. I'm assuming this is because of my basic video adapter. This is not that different than the limited Vista experience one would get if their video card was on the low end of the spectrum.

Now I want to see how it does on one of my much newer custom built computers.  I have already made an attempt at this, so stay tuned to find out what happened.

"At the source of every error blamed on the computer, you will find at least two erros, including the error of blaming it on the computer"