Tech Smartly

This is a short introduction to Linux, because there just simply aren’t enough people who know about it

Linux is an operating system that originated from a man called Linus Torvald. He based Linux off of UNIX, the same operating system that OSX is based on, except it’s not as bad as OSX. It started in 1991. A commercial operating system called MINIX, based on UNIX, was being sold. Linus wanted to create a similar operating system, but one that was free. This led him to create the Linux kernel, together with everything from the GNU project. He released GNU/Linux on 17 December 1991. Oddly enough, Linus was working on Linux when he was in a university as well. However, he did not drop out. Now what about Linux would be so great as to merit such a long and boring intro? There are too many reasons, so I will just give a very brief summary.

It is the most secure OS on the market. It has almost no viruses. In fact, there probably is no need for an anti virus. Since people find problems, fix them, and submit the solution, exploits are quickly fixed. Don’t ever use an anti virus on Linux. It simply isn’t worth it. Even when Linux gets more popular, and more people (attempt to) create viruses, Trojans, or worms, there are more people that will also fix all of those exploits. This makes the developers have to do less work, and makes Linux more secure.

Linux also turns out to be one of the most reliable operating systems around. There are some servers that have been up for more than 5 years, and have never been shut down due to crashes. Linux runs programs in a different way, where they aren’t tied to the system. The system is 1 layer, and applications are another. When the application crashes, or something goes wrong, it is much easier to get out of such a situation. I’ve had windows fail to load when a file became corrupt due to turning off the power when my games froze, or some other application. It is possible to recover from almost every situation without leaning over to touch that power button.

Different distributions are what make Linux so much better. Don’t like how red hat handles certain things? Then you might want to check out Slackware. Oh, it doesn’t have a good package management system? Maybe try Ubuntu, or Kubuntu, or maybe Fedora, or even Opensuse. You want something that feels more like windows? Trying to get someone to switch to Linux? Try Linespire, or Freespire! But maybe Mandriva suits your tastes more, especially since it has such an easy way of installing. Now what if you’re stuck with windows? Use DSL, a distribution of Linux that is only 49.5 mB. It is possible to run Linux inside of windows using only a pen drive.

Lastly, Linux is completely free. No money has to be exchanged. You don’t need to buy a separate copy for every computer. Even software can all be free. For Photoshop you have gimp. For Microsoft office there is OpenOffice. A lot of money could be saved if we didn’t spend so much on commercial products when there are just as good products that you can get for free. I never believed in the saying “you get what you pay for”.

Linux is used everywhere. It’s just too hard to pretend it doesn’t exist. Phones are using it. Big businesses, as well as small ones. Computer used for work, gaming, or surfing. More and more schools are using it. It’s not a fad, an inferior OS, or just a little piece of dirt on the sidelines. It’s something much better than windows. That resource hogging Aero that was in Vista was in Linux long before. In fact, Linux can do better things than Aero. In short, Linux is in general, a better operating system.

During spare time, when I’m bored and trying to put off writing my next blog post, I often stumble. Sometimes I get a few gems like this insulting source code, or several other many things. One of these such gems, is a Linux distribution chooser. One of the things that I often hear people talk about when they’re trying out Linux is what distro to choose. This is actually quite a big problem for many new Linux users. Some go to Ubuntu, a good OS for Linux newbies. After all, it is considered one of the most user friendly Linux distributions and the most widely used. However, for those who choose to be a little different, or don’t like Ubuntu, there are hundreds of different distros to choose from. Perhaps you would prefer Mandriva? Or maybe OpenSuse? If you’re up for a little challenge, try Gentoo. Or try all the Ubuntu flavors like Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Gobuntu, Ubuntu studio, Fluxbuntu, UbuntuME, Mythbuntu…Ok, you know what I mean. There are just so many different distros to choose from, and it can be really hard for someone with little technical skills, or even with quite a bit of technical skills to choose the “right” distribution. Here comes Polishlinux.org with it’s Linux Distribution Chooser.

The distribution chooser requires only several simple questions. It simple and easy. Due to the simplicity however, it does not say exactly why a distribution better, or what it has over other distributions. It shows several distros that fit best the criteria, with links explaining each on in depth. However, it can be a bit hard to compare them like that. Here comes in another tool to compare them. From the same website, you can easily compare two distros, comparing them in different categories and each distro is given a rank in each category.

With these two tools, I hope it will be easier for other people to choose a distro, especially those new to Linux. If the quiz is too hard for you, there is also another one which is easier to answer, and gives help if you don’t know what it means. Made by zegenie Studies, you can find it here.

If this has helped you jump the ship and start using Linux, then good luck to you. You won’t need it though, it should be pretty easy since you will have found a newbie friendly distro.

Let me start by introducing myself, seeing as this is my first time posting. My name is Jonathan Robertson, and I’m an IT specialist and Linux user. I am an old friend of Joe, which you of course all know. I will be writing a few articles on Linux for this blog, starting with my kLife series. I’m sorry if some articles come at a delay, I’ll try my best to keep writing whenever possible, but due to recent events, I know that I will be busy for a while.

Some stuff about me: I’m a Linux user! I have successfully deleted Windows from my machine, mainly because I don’t have the time for games these days so I don’t have anything to loose :-P. I use the openSuSE Linux distro, and am an active activist for Linux and Open Source. I truly believe in the potential of open source and Linux in particular, and the potential it has (with time, not overnight of course… but give it 10 or so years…) to challenge Microsoft Windows in the OS marketplace. To show Linux’s readiness today, I’m writing these articles that will cover the apps that we would use for the main uses we have for our computers. Namely: Music playing, photo management, picture editing, movie editing, movie playing, web designing, instant messaging, email and groupware and of course simple web browsing and basic office uses. The programs I plan to review for each of these (suggestions for changes are welcome of course)

Music player- Amarok
Photo manager- DigiKam
Picture editor- Krita
Movie editor - KDENLIVE
Movie player - Kaffiene
Web design - Quanta Plus
Instant messaging- Kopete
Email and groupware - Kontact
(Web browser - Firefox)
(Productivity suite - OpenOffice.org)

I will of course talk about the shortcomings of each, but I think I will prove that for anyone which only needs to do the basic tasks listed above, Linux is a viable option.

It seems like every time I write something new, I make a new category. Hopefully the category making process will slow down as I run out new stuff to talk about, and pool in more knowledge in the categories I have already. I hope I’ve reached that point, as I’m running out of new stuff to write about.

Now, I’ve written about my experience with Mandriva, which explained what thoughts about it. Unfortunately, I’ve been using windows. To say there are no games in Linux is a lie, but I don’t think it’s far from the truth. There are plenty of great games, including Battle for Wesnoth, as well as many other games that I’ve played. There are even companies that port their games to Linux, such as id, who allow Linux users to switch files allowing their games to run. As far as I know, not very many people do this, and Linux is often left in the dust when it comes to popular games.  I know there are people who will point out how it is possible to play many games using, and I will probably look like a fool when I mention a game. However, the fact that I have to wrestle with wine just to get a game running does not help at all when it can be done much more simply on windows. I’m not going to try cedega either, if I already paid for windows. I can not use Linux as much as I want to.

I must say, after using Linux, it is quite hard to go back to windows. I’ve been having several problems with it, and after using Linux, it seems worse than I ever thought it was. Here is a list of 5 things that I dislike:

1. It Crashes.

This may come as no surprise to many people, but it has become more apparent now. I have not had a single unrecoverable crash when using Linux. Sure, stuff crashes in Linux, but it doesn’t bring down the whole system. I’ve never had to reach for the power button for Linux. In windows, a lot of the time, I have to hold it down as windows is no longer responsive at all. What I find even worse, is that there is something that is causing seemingly random blue screens of death. In-game, occasionally when I shoot my gun, BSOD. I jump, BSOD. When I run on top of a bucket, and a sound plays because of that, BSOD. I’m browsing on the internet, and I get a BSOD. Something is causing it, and I don’t know what. Maybe it’s a driver that I have, but I have a lot of drivers for my printer, my sound card, etc. Meanwhile, Linux chugs along, happily oblivious to the fact that during the time windows is running, it crashes all the time. It doesn’t have to be a blue screen of death either. maybe it could just lock up and be totally unresponsive. Whatever happens, I have to reach for the power switch.

2. It’s so bland.

Sure, XP is old, but Vista is just not worth upgrading to. Vista also breaks games, and I have other things that I would like to say about Vista, but I’m talking about XP. After getting compiz working on Mandriva, it’s quite bland to look at. There was a comment about how people waste their time getting compiz working on my post about Mandriva. But it does give everything a certain zing to it. It feels more alive, for lack of a better term.  Spinning around my cube, using all my desktops to best effect, the closing and opening animations, it all helps to give it that oomph that XP - and Vista - doesn’t have.

3. It costs money.

There are so many different versions of Vista, with the highest price being at 400 dollars for ultimate. For an upgrade, it’s still 260 dollars. It’s hardly worth spending 260 dollars for a new interface. What if I want to use my 64 bit processor on windows? I already bought XP once, why do I have to buy it again for 64 bit XP? In Linux, if I find that there is not enough support for 64 bit, I could easily install 32 bit. What if I don’t like Mandriva? I can download another distro, like OpenSUSE, or Kubuntu. I have the freedom to try and see if I like it. I still am at times baffled at why some people pay money for things that they could get for free, like 7zip and winzip. It certainly proves the words of wisdom ” you get what you pay for” wrong.

4. Security.

What can I say? Windows is less secure that Linux, and I think that the recent PWN to OWN contest results speak for themselves. There are things like Plug and Play, MICE, and leaving DCOM on. there are so many flaws in XP. Although things have been improving with Microsoft changing several things such as enabling the firewall with service pack 2, more flaws are being found all the time. It’s obvious that Linux is built to be much more secure than windows. Instead of relying on security through obscurity, you can see the Linux source code. Any problems can be much more easily spotted. Not everyone is out there trying to infect other people, and the open source community is more driven to help than other communities that I’ve seen. If the code can be seen, people can tell the developers the problem.

5. All those little things that bug me.

After shutting down Linux when I was finished using it, I switched to windows to play some games. The first thing I noticed when I logged in was those little balloons that pop up near the taskbar. I read it, and it said I had inactive icons. Come on now, really? Is it really so important to tell me that there is some stuff I haven’t clicked on the past couple of days? Not only that, if you miss the little X, instead it opens up whatever window is associated with it. I don’t need some little balloon popping up displaying some useless info. Almost every time I see one of those, it’s not worth reading. Secondly, there is too much stuff on the start menu. I don’t need to see my network places, my recent documents, setting program access and defaults, my documents, etc. All I really need is the stuff on the left, the programs that I use the most. There are also many little things, things that I notice day to day that are frustrating and annoying. So maybe I am nitpicking, but after something like 5 years, it starts to become glaringly obvious what is wrong.

So after all of this negativity towards Windows, why am I still using it? Here is a list of 1 thing that I like:

1. Support for games and other programs

There are so many  games out there. Call of duty, Crysis, Portal, and many others. There are also programs like photoshop, and steam, which I use a lot. This is what my computer is sued for mainly. Unfortunately, under Linux there is no native support, except for id software and Epic Games. If I can’t use these sort of programs, then I find it hard to switch. Let me tell you something: if there was native support for all these games and programs, I would uninstall windows from my hard drive. Despite how much I like the open source movement and Linux, it’s just not convenient. Am I supposed to start up Linux, do some surfing, perhaps play battle for wesnoth, then restart my computer to use photoshop and play games? Not only that, I use steam all the time, and it has to be running so my friends can talk with me, and ask me to join their games.

2. There is no number 2.

There is only one thing that keeps me from using linux. If this issue was solved, and almost every game had native support, I wouldn’t even be writing this article. I would imagine that if this issue would be fixed, there would be so many more people using linux. This is why I don’t use linux.

As I was setting up Mandriva, I ran into a small problem. No sound. Stepping into the big scary world of Linux, I have no knowledge of many things. Sure, everyone knows about “the spinning cube”, but what do you do if your sound doesn’t work? Having an X-Fi card, I didn’t want it to go to waste so I used my favorite Linux documentation site, Google. I plonk in X-fi Linux compatibility, and to my dismay, I find that there is no support. No sound at all in Linux? Could I really use linux if I could not even hear anything? I didn’t want to go back to windows, so I kept on looking.

One of the unfortunate parts of being a first time linux user (or at least the first time I’ve used it seriously), is requiring a step by step guide on how to do certain things. My terminal knowledge is a joke, I only know cd, ls, makedir, and su. It was a godsend that I found a page explaining exactly how to get X-Fi to work. Head over to Usefuls to find out how exactly to do so. Also, there are some interesting things to read at the blog, like how to easily copy and paste in linux, or jpeg vs. png. For those with X-Fi problems, and not using 64-bit, this will be helpful.

As for why I’m not using the drivers offered by creative, for some reason it thought that I was using 32-bit mandriva, and I don’t know why. Whatever the reason, I have my sound working now, thanks to Usefuls.