Archive: Business & Technology

Dr. DigitDr. Digit 'Splains It All

At the end of last year I wrote about my new MacBook and how a dyed-in-the-wool PC guy like me adjusted to it.  I had also been thinking for a long time about setting up a Linux computer, mostly for the geeky fun of it, but partly to try setting up a local version of the Lansing Star for testing purposes.  I haven't done that yet, but just before the holiday I did set up Linux on an old computer.

Linux is a popular version of Unix, the operating system that is used in the majority of Web servers, and, by the way, to power OS X on the Mac.  The Lansing Star and our various other sites are hosted on Unix based computers.  It is a command line system kind of like DOS -- yes, little black and white windows in which you type commands to make things happen.  It runs on the same computers Windows runs on, but uses far fewer resources and is far more secure.


But at least some of the mavericks who create these free (they say the word refers to freedom, not the fact that they give the software away for free) software packages see it as a viable alternative to Windows, so several Graphic User Interfaces (GUI -- pronounced 'gooey') have sprung up to give Linux the look and feel of Windows.  Currently one of the  most popular GUIs is called Ubuntu.  That is the one I chose.

Ubuntu is a Zulu word that means 'humanness,' and the point is obvious -- its purpose is to make Linux usable by humans.  Not that techie-geeks aren't human.  But the average human can't begin to fathom Linux, at least without a GUI.

The computer I had available is an old one, with only 250MB RAM, but one way Linux is arguably better than Windows is that it uses a fraction of the resources its commercial rival uses.  So my old Pentium III machine still runs a bit slowly, but  noticeably faster than it did when I had Windows 2000 on it.

You can buy an installation CD, or just download it from http://www.ubuntu.net/ and burn your own CD -- I did the latter.  As with many things like this, the instructions were a lot harder to slog through than just doing it, so I pretty much just did it and it worked.

When you boot the computer from the CD you don't get a setup program.  You get Ubuntu.  The whole thing including desktop, menus, programs.  Everything!  If you don't like it you can shut it down and take out the CD and you still have Windows on your old PC.  It runs quite slowly from a CD drive, but you can get the idea of how it looks and feels.  And if you decide you like it there is an 'Install' icon on the desktop so that if you do like it you can click and install any time.

One of the raps against Linux (for the average person) is that your hardware has to be set up manually, which means knowing a lot about each printer, graphics card, etc. before you start.  I was worried about that, but Ubuntu recognized everything on my system -- even my generic wireless network card, so I was on the Internet automatically as soon as the installation was finished.

Ubuntu comes preloaded with a lot of other open-source programs such as the OpenOffice (Microsoft Office clone) suite, the Firefox Web Browser (my favorite on both the PC and the Mac, and now on Linux), an e-mail program, graphics programs, and many other programs.  Except for the compatibility issue, it is a productivity suite out of the box.  That is a big advantage over Windows except for one thing:  everybody uses Windows.

I did buy a copy of Microsoft Office for my Mac, but there isn't a Linux version, which pretty much takes Ubuntu out of the running for serious business use.  Sure, OpenOffice is largely Office-compatible, but 'largely' doesn't cut it in the business world.  And sure, people do get Office to run on Linux using Wine, a go-between program that allows Windows programs to run on Linux, but what serious business is realistically going to go through those hoops when they can just run it on a Windows PC?

And I have to wonder: what's the point of using Linux if you just want to run Windows programs on it?  The arguments put forth by the Linux community are not convincing.  Just because you can do it -- even if it's cool that you can do it -- doesn't mean that it's a good way to do it.

I ran into some other compatibility issues as well, trying to get videos to run properly, for instance.  And reading shared drives on my Windows network is a bit of a nightmare.  And setting up a clone of the Star for testing is a task that may not be worth it for a busy person, at least based on my failed attempts so far.  (I have done it successfully on three Linux Web hosts at one time or another, so it shouldn't be this hard on my own local computer.)

And even when something is compatible Ubuntu makes such a big deal out of downloading and installing whatever it is that makes it compatible that it inadvertantly reminds you that there are a lot of compatibility issues.

Linux is a lot more secure than Windows, and I suspect that the very annoying Vista security UAC (User Account Control) unit --- that keeps asking me if I am me, and if I am not me I should click cancel -- yah, right!  Some cyber criminal is surely going to say, 'Oh gosh, I am maliciously trying to do something on this computer and I really should stop -- OK, I'll click cancel!' --- seems to be based on Linux's practice of asking you for your password whenever you want to change something in the system.


But where Microsoft made it annoying to the point of making Windows almost unusable, the password prompt makes sense in Ubuntu.  There is no fuss about it -- you enter our password and make your system changes.  The Mac does something similar when yever you want to install something new, and it is not annoying there either.

For the most part Ubuntu looks and feels like Windows.  Out of the box the color scheme is brown, with the feel of an African plain -- not as attractive as Windows and you keep expecting Simba the Lion King to be lurking somewhere on the desktop.  Like Windows and OS X you can add your own desktop image and screensaver, so you are not stuck in the veldt.  But the elements of the basic windows are the same as in Windows, as are hot key combinations such as Ctrl+c for Copy and Ctrl+v for paste.  Anyone used to Windows could use Ubuntu with virtually no learning curve.

Ubuntu does have some problems with file sharing across operating systems.  I use a network drive to store my data so I can access it on my PC, the MacBook, or the Ubuntu machine.  No matter what I tried (and there are a LOT of things to try if you Google) nothing seemed to work to make Ubuntu read my network drive or shared drives on Windows or the Mac.  Ironically the network drive uses a Unix file format.

I finally found a way to force the issue by creating a shortcut that included the IP address and the share name (have I lost you?) in the Ubuntu file explorer.  But what a pain!  Most people don't know what an IP address is, and don't want to know.  There is a lot to be said for 'plug and play.'

By the way Leopard, the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system, also has known problems with network drives(which I have experienced myself on several occasions even though I have only had my Mac for about a month and a half), actually loosing them from time to time, apparently having to do with the computer 'going to sleep' and then waking up with a touch of network amnesia.  But rebooting -- or just waiting for what seems like a very long time -- seems to be a reliable way to fix that on the Mac -- the issue is much harder to deal with in Ubuntu.

When I work on Linux on my Web hosts I sometimes use the command line to make things happen, and I have done that a on my Ubuntu system (using a command window like you do in Windows or on the Mac if you load up X11 -- the newer Mac OSs are actually GUIs built on top of Linux just as Ubuntu is) as well.

After only a few weeks of using the system sporadically I am impressed with a lot of it, but am not entirely convinced it is ready for prime time as a contender against Windows.  But I have to admit it is a LOT closer than I expected.

With the security paranoia and heavy resource use of Vista, the word is that many users are dumping it off their new computers and 'upgrading' to Windows XP.  Microsoft has a lot to be worried about.  Macs are finally poised as a mainstream alternative, with competitive pricing, spunky performance, and a generally robust and usable operating system.

With GUIs like Ubuntu, Linux is getting there.  It's not there yet, but the price is right and it's getting close!

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