So after having this old (~5 years+) XP box sitting around for a while I finally decided to go ahead and install Ubuntu on it. I’ve always been afraid to change an OS on a computer but when I realized that you could install it alongside Windows and have both it was an easy decision.
Anyway I love it. The multiple desktops thing blows my mind. Why haven’t they done that in Windows? Another really cool side effect is that I was having issues with the fan on this computer roaring like a jet engine while it was just sitting idle on the desktop, but when I run Ubuntu it’s much quieter. I’m guessing that’s because Linux is lighter on the CPU resources?
I mainly only use this computer for backing up files anyway but I do feel one step closer to earning my nerd card.
(and no, I will not apologize for verbing Linux. Suck it)
Welcome to the club! It’s incredibly powerful and enabling freeing yourself from Windows. I never realized how many inefficiencies and annoyances Windows has that I’d been enduring.
The OS performance is amazing, especially task and desktop switching. In Ubuntu I can cycle between desktops filled with apps in a blink, yet Windows randomly decides to struggle at the simplest OS tasks that should always – and I mean always – be fast. e.g. “Start --> All Programs -->” and Windows then puts on it’s thinking cap and churns really hard to open the rollout menu…
Here’s the thing about Ubuntu and its users, for me.
I love Ubuntu. I dual-boot 10.04 (with XP) on my netbook and 9.10 (with Win7) on my desktop (haven’t gotten around to upgrading yet), and i agree that it’s quick and does lots of things really well.
But if it’s ever going to be the true Windows replacement that so many Ubuntu fans claim it can be, then we’re going to need to get to the stage where you can, in fact, do what you need to do using a GUI. I’ve seen so many Ubuntu fans claim, on the one hand, the Ubuntu can be just as easy to use and as good as Windows, and then, on the other hand, tell new Ubuntu users that the first thing they need to do is to start learning command line stuff.
There is a certain satisfaction in learning and using commands in the terminal, but the fact is that the vast majority of computer users just want their computer to work, and they want it to work using the type of mouse and button commands that they’ve grown accustomed to on Windows and Mac operating systems.
mhendo, just curious–what have you run into in Ubuntu that you couldn’t do through the GUI? My boyfriend is totally non-techie and he has a netbook running Linux and he tools along just fine. Well, actually, it might be because he’s non-techie that he hasn’t run into stuff he can’t do with the GUI.
I’m just curious, not calling you out or anything. I do some stuff command line because I like the nerdiness factor, and it’s just easier for me to do some things that way.
It’s not that you CAN’T do almost everything from the GUI, it’s that you’re missing out on the core assumptions that make unix such an amazing thing.
Windows is built on the idea that you have a few BIG applications that do many things, unix is built on the idea that you have lots of little applications that can be stacked together to do things.
Case in point:
We have a log server at the office, all servers feed their logs to it. It stores them in files that get rotated each day.
I can tell you how many times Joe logged into the Exchange server from Outlook Web Access on July the 14th with a pretty darned simple command line.
grep ‘Joe’ rmessages_06-14-2010.log | grep ‘scdleowa’ | grep -c ‘login.aspx’ (I’m simplifying for the sake of arguement.)
That line says 'show me all the times ‘Joe’ shows up in a log file…then send those results to a command that says 'how many of them are to ‘scdleowa’, then send THOSE results to a command that counts the number of REMAINING lines contain ‘login.aspx’.
So, not pretty, but not hard, and at the end, I can say Joe logged in 12 times. I can then remove the ‘-c’ and tell you what times he logged in.
Alternately, I can take 500 meg worth of logs, spew them through print, awk, sort, and uniq and give you a list of ALL the IP addresses that hit your web server, and how many times they did so.
The KDE package manager is kind of crap, but I love Synaptic for a GUI-based apt program.
I’ve been running Ubuntu for a year, and it just gets better with each update. Unfortunately, I recently wiped it off my computer for Windows 7. I didn’t really want to, but wine and Crossover Games tend to lag behind Windows unless a new game happens to be wine-friendly. There were too many games I wanted to play that I just couldn’t run in Ubuntu.
I do plan to replace Win 2k on my aging laptop with Ubuntu, though, probably specifically Lubuntu which uses far less RAM. It’s not a gaming machine, just something I need for internet access and communications, so that should be perfect.
I like Ubantu as well. Just so people know, first of all if you download it, you may have trouble. I was never able to get a correct download. My checksums never matched. I wrote and they sent me a free copy in a week on CD.
You can also try Ubanut via the CD without installing anything. So you can see if you’d like it or not.
I have put this on many an older computer and people always like it.
I do agree with you, Unintentionally Blank, but what mhendo is talking about is how Ubuntu (or other GUIfied distros) won’t take off like Windows because as soon as you start using them, you’re told you should learn all this command-line stuff. Joe User doesn’t want to do that. You and I and other geeks and nerds do. I also don’t think Joe User would be doing the kind of thing in your example. It IS a thing of beauty to be able to do though, agreed! I was mostly curious about what mhendo had run into that he couldn’t do GUI-ly.
Funny you mention it. My university uses Moodle and my on-campus job is basically supporting it for teachers. Let me know if you have any questions about it…
It seems version 2 is coming in September, do you advise to wait for it or set PHP4 (this looks to be a pain because the new Ubuntu installs PHP5 and PHP4 appears as not installable in the Ununtu library) in the server to make Moodle 1.9 work properly or it is better to try Moodle 1.9.9 with PHP5?
Keep talking folks - got my attention now. Not hijacking this, but never realized the dual-boot (?) bit. It really lessens the load (from Vista anyways?)? I’ve had no issues to really speak of, but my GPU temp is usually too high for my ‘comfort’ (Speedfan indicated) and not quite a nerd anymore, but command-line is no stranger from days of CPM and onward. Never too deep into the necessity of needing details like user’s info, etc. Just me on my HP m9150f QuadCore w/ Vista and do like tinkering with stuff. Hmmmmmm… 100GB free on one drive and more on another and could easily erase ~70-90 gb of pics that are old to make near 200GB free on one drive. Plenty, right, for dual boot? That’s all I’ll ask here.
sigh - why did I read this thread?! I do want to be free, though/ FREE!
Well, APT has Super Cow Powers! (Message displayed at end of text after typing apt-get help.)
Yep, bought that during my ‘read-everything-Stephenson-has-EVER-written’ phase. My favorite is the ‘Hole Hawg’ analogy, which I still refer to occasionally when appropriate.
Are you trying to set it up for a school? We don’t run Linux at my Uni so I don’t know how much of a PITA getting the PHP4 set up would be but sounds like for your purposes it’s better to wait for the new release.
