...in case anybody is curious about what a non-M$ life looks like...
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The State Of Linux Today
I'm a political activist who uses a laptop hard and heavy in a computer-related field. Before that I did over 15 years of IS tech support, sysadmin stuff, some techwriting.
Seven months ago despite every possible precaution, update and paid-for add-on security, my WinXP install got nailed by botnet Trojan. I spent about a day trying to disinfest it, no joy.
I scored an external USB hard disk (160gig on sale at Officemax for $100), backed up my data, reformatted the disk. But not with XP. With Linux a particular distro (distribution) called Ubuntu version 6.06.
I haven't run Windows since. I figured others might benefit from a report back from the other side of the great divide where Microsoft fears we'll tread. With damned good reason.
I've written this with the non-geek in mind.
Linux: what is it, and some definitions:
UNIX is an operating system originally made for big iron - large scale multi-user computer systems. Which means right at it's core, it knows how to deal with more than one program going on at once and more than one user, whether it's at once or logging in at different times, but with individual settings and security privileges . UNIX traces it's roots back to 1969 and knew how to do all this well back into the 1970s. Across the 1990s, Sun Microsystems and others adapted a Graphical User Interface onto it similar to how the Macintosh and now MS-Windows looks and feels complete with mice, clicking at things, variable fonts, all that.
The UNIX, Macintosh and Windows operating systems are all closed source - meaning the companies that own the code know how it works, and they sell it to you, but the ability for either you or other companies to modify/customize that code is seriously limited.
In 1993 a very smart Finnish geek by the name of Linus Torvald (where we get the Li in Linux) began work on a functional clone of UNIX, with a similar feel and security-related features, but with a key difference: he gave away the code and did not directly copy prior UNIX code. He used a concept that had been mostly theoretical before, in which he said that anybody can copy or tweak his code to make their own derivatives, but in doing so they had to agree to also give away any code of their own that used his code as a starting point. This is the GNU Public License originally conceived at the Free Software Foundation. Hence you'll see the term GNU/Linux at times.
Within a few years, a few *thousand* geeks worldwide thought this was a jolly idea and all dove headlong into collectively building a complete, functional alternative to Microsoft's dominance.
Sidenote: as of the last few years, the Mac OS has changed to where it also has an underlying UNIX core. The Mac and Linux are now cousins to a point where most Linux software of note is also cut in a Mac version as the re-coding between the two is pretty minimal.
Once it was clear Linux was for real , a number of sizable companies realized they could get download of this borderline amateur stuff , clean it up some and produce operating systems and products faster that way than doing their own coding job from scratch - and while they'd be barred from selling Linux *derivative* code, they could make good money on *services* (and could sell add-on code just like you can sell programs for Windows). Red Hat was a pioneer but were joined by Novell and now *IBM* in this concept.
Full disclosure here: I'm about ready to start up a consulting biz helping people jump from Windows to Linux at a flat rate installing the OS, moving their data, setting it all up, etc. But my intent isn't to spam. And if you suspect that's what I'm doing, you'll be dissuaded when you see the number of links I'm going to post to these various Linux pieces and resources at the end of this file...
Different groups of programmers (amateur or professional) produce different distributions of Linux. Let me give you a basic lay of the land discussing the distros I've played with so far and the pieces surrounding them:
Linux applications come in three forms: source code that you have to compile yourself (by now hardly ever needed, but doable by a non-geek able to follow directions), standard generic Linux applications meant to work on a broad variety of Linux variants, and Distro-specific packages set up to work correctly with a specific Linux variant. The latter are often easier to install than Windows apps are on Windows. And on top of those, there is a program called WINE (free version) or Crossover Office (a bit slicker at moderate cost) which allows *some* MS-Windows applications to work under Linux .
Gnome and KDE : these aren't distributions, but rather graphical overlays to the underlying Linux system. They're the two biggest Desktop Environments and they control first how your system will look and feel, and to a lesser degree what applications you can run: most major Linux programs can cope with either, but some programs are written for one or the other. Gnome is slightly more Macintosh like , KDE is a bit more Windows-ish , at least out of the box. So far my preference is Gnome and I'll discuss what's proven to be a big benefit later.
Debian Project: Debian is a group of just over 1,000 programmers, tech writers, artists and other project members who have no connection (as a group) to any company. They are one of the oldest distro producers out there, and when they mark a complete release as being stable , you can bet it is. However, they tend to go fairly long periods between releases, always over a year. At present their current release in the 3.x series is getting somewhat stale: the installer is a bit primitive with little automation and there's less support for the latest and greatest bits (application or operating system). They also release setups marked Unstable which contain newer, slicker software parts but said bits aren't fully tested. Debian is apparently close to finishing a new stable release (version 4.0) which is eagerly awaited and may be a contender for The Chosen One : the standardized Linux that eats major market share from Micro$oft. Due to it's history, it has more pre-canned packages available than any other Linux variant.
Ubuntu: this Linux distro is produced by a small South African company of 60 employees. They take the Debian Unstable branch and clean it up. What they end up with is very modern, slick, good looking and has probably THE easiest-to-use installer of any distro and of late. It can also use all the application packaging work that has been done for Debian, giving it a massive potential application base. It's been what a lot of Linux newbies jump to first, myself included. Version 6.06 (which means sixth month of 2006 ) code name Dapper Drake was excellent. But a few months later, 6.10 Edgy Eft turned out to be too edgy . Ubuntu runs the Gnome desktop, while the Kubuntu variant runs KDE.
OpenSuse: Novell corporation sells the Suse Linux distro (packaged with services and some Novell proprietary code) to corporations, but releases OpenSuse free to a sizeable community fan base which tweaks it a bit further. I jumped to this after Ubuntu 6.10 crashed a few times and found it very, very stable. It never crashed in the couple of months I ran it. However, for somebody like me who is constantly trying new programs and toys , I found it lacking due to the relatively crude software installer/update system. It's a viable choice for somebody wanting to just build a system, load good basic applications and then not screw around with it. But for grins'n'giggles I next tried:
Fedora Core 6: Fedora is the free-to-the-community version of the corporate Red Hat Linux distro, so in that sense it's similar to OpenSuse. In both cases a good-sized corporation is using the free version to generate goodwill among geeks while using said geeks to test out the latest, coolest bits. I've been running it now for over a month and with one big caveat I love it: it's software load/upgrade process is almost as good as the Debian/Ubuntu family tools, while it's ability to load generic Linux apps is unbeaten. While some Linux setups choke on programs not specifically customized for that distro, Fedora 6 snacks them down, burps and holds out it's plate for seconds. It too hasn't crashed on me once, and I pound on systems pretty heavily. But there's a snake in paradise: the installer is non-newbie-friendly on a good day, ghastly when things get rough. But hey, once it's running, it friggin' rocks...modern, plenty of auto-updates by the original brewers to keep it up to date, tweakable as hell yet perfectly newbie-compatible...once it's running!
Applications:
OpenOffice is a complete clone of the Microsoft Office application suite, with strong equivalents to Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. There's also a fair business graphics package (drawing for flow charts, org charts, etc.) and a modest database. The newest revision (2.1) is very, very good at interchanging documents with MS-Word, Excel and Powerpoint and improving in the database area ( MS-Access ). It runs on both Linux and Windows, so if you're curious, try it out on Windows and see if it can eat all your documents. If it digests them just fine, you can be assured that the OpenOffice for Linux is just as compatible and up-to-date.
Firefox is a web browser also well-known in the PC.
Email: there are many good Email programs for Linux that can take in all your old data from Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express . Thunderbird, Evolution, Konquorer and others.
The GIMP : an oddly-named near-clone of Adobe Photoshop(!). It lacks features needed for professional-grade use (full color matching on the CMYK system for example) but 90% of all Photoshop home users it's all you need. And free is a damned sight better than $1,000 for Photoshop! Also available for Windows.
Many, MANY more, some just plain weird, many just plain good. Most free, some worth a bit of money. On my laptop right now I have a ton of free sound and video editing programs, some pretty good games, everything I need to read and *create* Acrobat PDF files and more. With very rare exceptions, you always spend far less in software costs under Linux than with Windows or Mac, to such a degree that it would more than offset the cost to have a geek like me come out and back up your Windows data, load and configure Linux and then bring your data back. AND connect your camera, printer, scanner...
Every program I've listed here is free except for Crossover Office (about $40).
Living With Linux:
I've completely swapped out my Linux installations several times. And I only have one computer. That sounds like a lot of struggle, but it actually wasn't. Here's why: Linux (like it's cousin UNIX) keeps all of it's directories and program configuration files in standard places. One of these is the home directory . My data files and program configuration files are stored in a standard fashion due to this sense of structure built into the system.
So here's what swapping distros looks like:
1) Go to the new distro site, download the new Linux as a series of CD image files.
2) Each big file gets burned to a CD and marked as to what it is.
3) Plug in external hard disk.
4) Copy the home directory on my laptop to the external hard disk.
5) Boot the laptop off of disk number one of new set of Linux distro disks and do the install.
6) Load the new Linux. Connect to the Internet with it and download the updates (let it cook for an hour, the first update you do usually takes a bit to let you catch up with all the latest goodies since the distro was set for release some months back...)
7) Tell it to go grab and load the various applications you want, straight off the Internet.
Copy the home directory back off of that external hard disk.
And that's IT. Because all your various program configuration stuff including Email account setup, bookmarks, your files, your passwords in the web browser, your preferred layout stuff in the word processor, you touch NONE of that.
Because it was all organized properly in the home directory.
You flat cannot do that in Windows. There, if your operating system gets corrupted or infested or otherwise brain-dead, you have to both reload AND re-configure everything. It takes three times as long.
So far I know that this zero config distro swap works great when you're staying with Gnome from distro to distro. It *might* work with KDE, I don't know. I do suspect that jumping between Gnome and KDE could lead to issues I've messed with KDE enough to know it's a bit off from Gnome convensions.
(continued next post...)
