So you wanna make the jump to linux
kryyst
Ontario, Canada
After years of being a windows user (which often means a windows hater) I've finally decided to make the jump and go linux on my home system. This isn't going to be a trial thing as I'm not under any circumstances going to switch back to windows. I'll also be using my home system as a test platform for starting to roll out linux to all (or as many as I can) desktops at work.
I'm doing this for a couple reasons. First I'm sick of M$ and all their bandage sollutions. SP2 is a poorly implemented fix and slowly the signs of M$ and their DRM and system control are coming into play. With every version of windows and almost every patch it seems there is more and more stuff being installed in the background that can't be dissabled let alone removed. Longhorn asside Windows is become a less free system to play with and to make my computer do what I want it to. Then there is the whole cost associated with the software to get windows to do what I want it to do. Now there are free alternatives for many things but a lot of them are suck ass or just ported over from a linux version.
Anyway I started with the switch on the weekend and I've just been installing and playing with different linux flavors to finally decide on the one I'll be using for (remember this will also be the one that roles out to potentiall 100 workstations as well).
anyway I'll keep posting up progress reports here as it's a hot topic lately and I know that at least a few of you have thought about it as well.
I'm doing this for a couple reasons. First I'm sick of M$ and all their bandage sollutions. SP2 is a poorly implemented fix and slowly the signs of M$ and their DRM and system control are coming into play. With every version of windows and almost every patch it seems there is more and more stuff being installed in the background that can't be dissabled let alone removed. Longhorn asside Windows is become a less free system to play with and to make my computer do what I want it to. Then there is the whole cost associated with the software to get windows to do what I want it to do. Now there are free alternatives for many things but a lot of them are suck ass or just ported over from a linux version.
Anyway I started with the switch on the weekend and I've just been installing and playing with different linux flavors to finally decide on the one I'll be using for (remember this will also be the one that roles out to potentiall 100 workstations as well).
anyway I'll keep posting up progress reports here as it's a hot topic lately and I know that at least a few of you have thought about it as well.
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I was at 60gig hdd space (20 and a 40) and that was maxed out with stuff that I needed to keep. So I went out and picked up a 160gig drive. So that'll take care of all my needs.
I've played off and on with linux in the past through different distro's so I'm pretty familiar with the major flavors and the install I was getting into as far as drive set up goes which is a big advantage. Normally I would have deither been deciding between Fedora or Mandrake. Debian is also an excellent choice as I've actually set it up for a server before. But I've tried it previously on my home system and had shitty luck with it getting to detect some of my hardware. I'm not a linux novice but in no way do I know enough about re-compiling kernels and some of the other annoying things you may have to get into to get tricky hardware working.
Anyway I had Suse and Xandros recomended to me so I figured I'd give them a try. If you don't know both are comercial versions of linux Suse is put together by Novell and I believe there is a stripped down free version but the general one you download for $29. Xandros also has a free version but the general retail comes in three flavors $39, 89 or 129 (again download version).
Suse is based off rpm's and Xandros is based off of Debian (1 pt Xandros). I had 'evaluation' copies of both of them so cost wasn't an issue. Suse is pretty close to your standard linux package that you'd get with Fedora or Mandrake. It's got a few little things when it comes to installer stuff through suse but essentially I can't say it warrant's the $29 when you can get the exact same things through Fedora or Mandrake.
Xandros though is a pretty optimized Debian kernel and has been heavily stress tested for stability (which is saying alot since Debian is very stable to begin with). You also gain access to Xandros network to get apps that have been configured specifically for it many are free but there are also others you can buy. You also get win4lin that's been modiffied to only allow 4hr sessions at a time but generally that's more then enough. If you get the business version it comes with Crossover Office which is great (this is also the version I had). Win4lin full version is around $89 and Crossover is $99 so to get it bundled if you need M$ programs to work you can't go wrong with the $129 business version of Xandros. So even if you get the free version of Xandros or another more modern debian flavor like mephis for example you still are paying some bucks to get win4lin and crossover.
Before the actual install of anything (still on my windows system) I took a little prep time to think about how I'm going to prep my drives for the new install.
My OS was on my 40gig drive and my 20gig was storage that was also over flowing on my 40 so really I needed everything off both. I could have gone to the trouble of backing things off to DVD but I'm really lazy and that's a big pain in the ass. So I yanked the 20 and dropped in the 160
I put the 160 inplace of one of my optical drives so I had all three hdd's in my machine.
Then using device manager I made 2 partitions on it a 60 and a 100. The 60 I did nothing with and the 100 got an NTFS format. I used ghost to get a perfect copy of my 40 onto my 100 gig partition and then just copied everything over from the 20 on to the 100 gig partition also. I then powered off and set everything up propperly with the 40gig as master 160 as slave and my two optical drives (cd-rw and dvd-rw).
Then booted up with the Xandros cd in the drive. Booted up and started the install Both suse and Xandros (and any other distro for that matter) both will start up and give you options on how you want to start the install. There is usually a automatic and a form of custom settings. Automatic is just that it'll look at your drives and make desicisons on how you want everything partitioned and formated for you.
However since I had some win data on there that I wanted to keep and I knew how I wanted things formated I used the custom hdd set up.
Both programs use a gui interface they are both a little different but if you've used any sort of partitioning software before you should be able to figure it out. You are presented with a screen showing your drives. In my case I was show hda1(Physical harddrive 1st partition) and hdb1 and hdb 2 (second hdd with partition 1 and 2 on it). I deleted the NTFS partition on hda1 and first created a 2gig swap partition (I have 1gig of ram so I really only needed 1 - 1.5 gigs but 2 won't hurt if I expand). Every linux set up needs a swap partition and you want it at the beginning of the drive for speed reasons. It uses its on partition type apptly named swap.
Next with the remaining 38gigs I made it one big partition using the resizer file type (your options are ext2, ext3, Fat32 and resizer). As to why I chose resizer it's personal choice I like it my 2nd choice would have been ext3. What you use won't make a huge difference for a home system so I'd use whatever one your particular distro suggests.
You then have to assign what you want that partiton mounted as in this case it's my first parttion so it gets mounted as "/". Think of "/" as c:\ it's the starting place for everything and asside from 'swap' is the only other partition you have to have. Now onto hdb1 & 2. HDB1 got partitioned as resizer and I mounted it as "/usr" (kinda like a combination of c:\windows and c:\program files). HDB2 it detecte as my NTFS partition and that I'm leaving alone (for now). Normally the other partition you'd want to set up is /home (c:\documents and settings). But since I didn't have a place for it (yet) it will get stuck on my hda1.
So my partitions are set up and the install proceeds.
At this point both distro's will ask how you want things set up. They'll either give you a couple pre-determined selection of apps to install or you can do custom and go through the huge lists of things to install. I again chose custom and when through the lists. Xandros has a much smaller list of things to set up and does an excellent job of not showing things that need to be installed because of debendancies so I ended up just picking everything. Suse has a huge list (typical to most other flavors of linux) and it took a good 20mins to go through all the different options picking and choosing what I did and didn't want set up. It then checked for dependencies to make sure everything I wanted working was working. In this regard Xandros certainly wins out in my books. For the expert user who wants to get to the nitty gritty you may prefer Suse but since I don't know what every single little program does Xandros was the better choice. It's dumbied down but still infinitely more customizable then a default Windows package.
At anyrate after selecting packages they'll ask some questions about your network settings (generally click the defaults) they'll ask for a root (administrator) password and also create a general user - in this case an account for me and one for my wife - (or more if you want). In linux this general user is important unlike windows where you normally boot up and in as full administrator there really is no need to do it in linux, it's also a bad, really bad reason for security issues. You want to run as a general user all the time and only swith to root when you need to (which is also so easy and you don't need to reboot most of the time). Ok that's all set up it starts the install and after some time everything is set up.
Eveything installs and then in both cases you are prompeted if you want to go to the web to get any updates or install more software. Suse loads up there site where you are presented with another huge list of updates/options to pick from. Xandros goes to there effective web store and lists updates and new things you can install it also sperates the $$$ from the free ones. So I went through and did all the free stuff and the updates. After you pick everything it'll start the process of downloading and installing them.
Ok first glitch er hangup rather. In both cases I selected everything at once which is a huge ammount of info 100's of megs and told it to install. Both started but would get hung up at some point so I'd have to go back re-select and start upgrading again. After 3 failed attempts in Xandros I went through and selected a few things at a time and installed them. Suse on the other hand even only selecting a few at the time would constantly stall during the upgrading and require numerous (several hours) before everything ot installed. Some things I couldn't even get because of network stalls.
In either case though after that I rebooted and was up and running. Both detected my printer (which was often a nightmare in older linux installs) and they both detected my digital camera when I plugged it in (huge sigh of relief). So there other then a little frustration during the upgrades (or potentially alot on your level of patients) I was up and running with a useable system.
In both I could get on the net Xandros comes bundled with Mozilla Suse uses Konqueror. Of the two I prefer Mozilla. Got my emails up and running again Suse uses Kmail and Xandros Mozilla here the differences are negligable. They both have instant messanger programs similar in function to trillian so my wife was happy.
Now for me first thing open up their media player programs to check to see if I can playback my movies. They both have a wineplayer only Suse doesn't for 'legal' reasons bundle divx4 or xvid codecs with it. Xandros on the other hand has no qualms about it. So in Xandros I could play all my movies and in Suse no luck. So I started the hunt for codecs in Suse I found the divx5 and xvid codecs for Suse (little bit of searching) followed the instructions installed things and well still no luck. It seemed the more codecs I put in it'd also ask for yet another one to get up and running. After a good hour of configs and installs (none of which I could find the rpm's for btw) could I get it working. So suse struck a major strike for me. I'm sure with more tiem and surfing I could get it working though. But well my wife gets cranky when she can't watch her porn so time was one thing I didn't have.
Everything else though between both distro's worked find Suse has openoffice and Xandros comes with either open or staroffice (business comes with star) so I could access all my word, excell and powerpoint docs no problem there. They both come with Gimp and other art programs to keep my wife happy with her digital photo fun and they have different mp3 players to play and a tonne of games so my wife was happy.
Me though I wasn't done yet. Xandros during it's upgrades installs bit torrent. Suse doesn't so for suse it was off and hunting again. I eventually found a bit torrent rpm for Suse (there were a few but all have strengths and weeknesses) in the end I went with the general bit torrent as I've had most luck with it on my windows system. Click the rpm and it installs (yeah). So then I clicked on a torrent and nothing happens (boo) it asks what program you want to open it with. So to the shell (dos prompt) I located the bit torrent folder and after some trial and error I figured out which torrent file I had to use to get the downlaod started. So problem solved there but it wasn't as seemeless as Xandros. In both caseses for testing purposes I started dl'ing two huge files (2gigs each) and only suffered minor internet slow down and no system slow down (slow down is one thing that some bit torrent versions inflict in linux). So it was all good.
Both come with file browsers Suse has the standard one. I like Xandros better here it's a personal thing but I found it easier to navigate (ok it had a windows look damn M$). But They did a better job at visually distinguishing the different types of file types from another so that was a bonus. But really it's personal taste so no real winner.
They both have cd/dvd burning software and I haven't tested it yet but they seem to have the core needs met so really that's about all I needed for a basic set up. I can surf, check mail, chat, dl files, burn them, play music, watch movies (ok well not in suse yet).
So far for ease of set-up and general purpose use my feelings are towards Xandros (plus my wife likes it more so that alone could be the swing). But I still wasn't 100% sure on which one I wanted to go with but since again cranky non-porn watching wife I had to make up my mind and choose a distro to go with. Then I checked out this Crossover thing that Xandros comes with, talk about a kid in the candy store.
Crossover is just a very, very well done implementation of wine. Wine if you don't know is a tool that allows you to generally opperate windows programs in linux. Generally with wine (suse comes with wine btw) you need to configure things specifically to get each program you want to work, working under linux. It's often not a big thing as there are tons of scrips and info on it on the net especially when it comes to Office software such as M$ office, Adobe Photoshop, etc...etc...
Crossover though was sitting there installed an integrated into Xandros. So first thing I did was go into my windows\program files (from my backed-up drive) and click on trillian. Up it popped contact list and all and was working. Now keep in mind I haven't moved .dll's or registries or anything it just worked. Next I tried some of my wifes pop-cap games (she loves the with a passion I can't even understand). Again clicked on the .exe and they ran. Though they did come up as unregistered. So right then I was sold, but hell new toys new time to play.
To get things to propperly work you need to install them through crossover so I started up crossover (which I should mention uses an windows explorer like browser). So you start up crossover and you pop in the office disk and it installs. It's awesome. Granted OpenOffice gives you word, excel, power point anyway so you don't need Office but I thought it was a good test. Also withing crossover since it's essentially running whatever M$ program in it's own shell should something go wrong you can just kill it and your linux system is intact.
Well that was the selling point. So I blew off Suse (remember I installed Xandros checked it out then installed Suse) and installed xandros. This time doing the upgrades I did it only a few things at a time and had no problems at all.
Now that it's up and running I'll take all the info on my 100gig windows partitions move it over temporarily to my 60gig usr partiton. Then format the 100gig with resizer and make that my home partition and move all my user info there and mount it properly. Once that's done my linux conversion is complete.
At anyrate did the reading set up apt-get to get all the required K3B packages and libraries and it didn't install. It kept lookinf for dependencies, all of which I had version matching numbers and everything. So I tried a manual install using the source files which is not so easy and in this case proved impossible. It'd always get to the same point where it was looking for dependencies. I would point it to the files specifically and at best it would say you require version 1.2.1.1 but are running version 1.2.1.1 well fuck me same version still no install. DVD burning for me is a must and I could go back to dual-booting with windows or running windows inside of VMWARE but at that point I might as well run windows.
So I checked out yet another distro. This time a sweet one called www.mepis.org It's also Debian based (huge plus) and at it's core is one that you can run straight off the CD similar to the popular Knoppix. Colour me impressed, it's fast, faster then Xandros comes with K3B installed and played all my media the same as Xandros (The ones Suse wouldn't play). So 3 for 3 with mepis. So I installed it on my system and blew away Xandros. Best of all since it's debian I can use alot of the packages that came with Xandros such as Star Office instead of Open Office and Cross Over office in Mepis (at least that's my theory and should work baring special configs that xandros used). I haven't tried them out yet but I hopefully will tonight.
The Mepis install was smooth boot up with the cd and it's running click the install button and it just copies itself to a HDD everything set up already. I have to do some tricks to keep my home directories that I had for Xandros intact as I have data in there that I'll be bringing into Mepis. But other then that about 30mins to partition and install onto my HDA1.
So Xandros I was really impressed with and for a novice user that knows nothing you probably can't go wrong with Xandros. However if you need DVD-burning capabilities you may have an issue. People have had a simple install to get K3B up and running but for me it just wouldn't work.
So for me (as of now) my new current recommended Distro is Mepis. You can run it off a CD to show people what they are getting into and the install is easy. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that the full Blown Xandros Business edition has but it is more then compares to the free or standard editions of Xandros.
Incidentially in Suse can you get video's that require xvid or Divx5 or mpeg4 codec's working? I couldn't for the life of me even after following the how to's.
Oh and one more note I jumped back to Xandros again. I still like mepis but it didn't seem to be stable in the long run kept locking up with my DVD drive when burning and also during video playback after 1hr it would start to get buggy. So now I'll try doing the K3B install in Xandros again and try and get lucky. If not I'll be vmwaring into XP to do my burning from the looks of it.
AHhh the fun of Linux. Linux is great but it's still about a year away from where it needs to be to totally replace windows for 90% of the population.
My XP system was stable most of the time so I honestly can't compare that yet. However Xandros has been up running and lots of load on it for a good week straight. It hasn't required a singel reboot when installing anything Accept 1 patch at the beginning. The desktop GUI had to be restarted a few times because of changes but that's minimal. The user switching works very well and I've had up to 4 torrents dling as my user in the background while my wife was logged in under her account and she didn't even notice it. Granted that's also a function of my hacked linksys G router. But it's not even a bandwidth issue there is no desktop slowdown at all. I know under windows if I had 4 torrents going on even without switching to another user I noticed system slow down.
I should also note, and it may just be a coincidence that my torrent transfer speeds have generally been faster then under windows ususally in the 50-70kb range off of suprnova or torrentreactor. It could be just luck (luck for a week mind you) but I do know linux is much better at handling network traffic then windows.
Now the downside is games, big games linux doesn't support Direct X though there is wineX that is doing wonders in porting it over to linux. For me that's not an issue as generally my computer is a util beast and I leave my gaming to my Xbox. However for somepeople it may be. For that I'd say either stick with windows or dual booting.
For dual booting I'd recomend going with XP but keep it stripped and lean of everything accept your games. Then do everything else through linux that way you are actually going to benefit. First your XP will be much faster since you can strip out all the bloat and optimize it for gaming secondly you have a much more powerful util in Linux to do everything else.
The other thing is my wife is actually prefering Linux over windows. She's finding it easier and faster to get it to do what she wants. Now granted she by no means is a power user she surfs, emails chats does some picture editing and plays MP3's that's basically it. But she's getting into it more and more. She's learning to manipulate her desktop settings and customize things and making it more personal to her. Which is fine as whatever she does won't effect me one way or the other. She can try and break it or screw it up as much as she wants and the system and my settings are intact (she doesn't have the root password).
I mentioned to her that If I could get things to work (this was with mepis) that I may just say screw it and go back to Windows because as much as I like tinkering around I still prefer to have things working at the end of the day. She was actually annoyed at the idea as in the week she's been on linux she probably knows it better then she knew XP in the 2 years she was on it.
Fedora c2 is running like a charm. i left my gaming for the XBox. im doing everything i was doing on my Winxp pc.
adobe photoshop is running great with the help of crossover office.
and i can manage my xbox backups using the win32 version of qwix (running in WINE)
as far as getting videos to play, follow this article. i got it working in 20mins
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mplayer-fedora.shtml
thanks for an awesome article
Took two installs to get it right, because I wasn't really paying attention the first time or thinking ahead. The first time I just installed everything available which wasn't necessary and infact overkill since I'm not running a DNS server or a mail server installing those packages caused major overhead that I didn't need. Telling to act as a DNS server also was screwing up my internet connection as it was constanly trying to locally get the DNS and obviously it couldn't.
Second time through though it was set up correctly and everything is up and going. It doesn't have Crossover office but it has wine which works 90% as good on the majority of apps. Crossover Office has a couple nice tricks and I'll probably get it and install it. Debian comes with both Gnome and KDE for your GUI pleasure I still prefer KDE and I'm sticking with it but for some the option is nice. One nice thing about using stock Debian is that it's got the stock kernel where as Xandros and Mepis both have altered kernels so some packages don't work for them.
Unlike windows though switching these installs around has been a piece of cake. Since I have my home and my dl'd stuff on another drive I can just format and re-install to my hearts content and never loose anything. Once the system is up I just redirect the default home drive to my existing one and all my user settings are instantly back and running. Nothing lost at all.
Couple of things, if your using a installed kernel on Debian, you might want to check out some of the other pre-built's. I'm using
2.6.8-1-686
I'm a long time linux professional, and Debian still gives me a headache sometimes on the desktop/workstation. But, thats what I'm running ATM for my laptop and couldn't be happier. There isn't a distro I haven't used (besides Mandrake LOL) and I'll probably stick around with Sarge for a bit.
If your looking to do commercial roll out's of large volumes of desktop's, I would probably take a step back and look at the redhat desktop and Xandros Desktop Management Server. These tools are just for doing large desktop rollout and management. I stick more in the servers, but I've had my eye on these
Like you I've run the gambit on distro's and for any headache debian has given me in the past with woody Sarge compared to most distro's has been extremely easy and problem free. Xandros though for the newb is still my recomended install it's really very high quality and pain free.
I have another 20gig drive kicking around that I throw in anytime a new distro comes out that I install onto and check out. If it works then I install it on my main drive. Just always keeping my home and data storage on a seperate drive. That's my favortie thing in linux issolated programs and home partitions. I can switch my distros round as much as possible and the home accounts are fine. Unlike windows where even if you back up your user accounts you can't just transport them around and have them instantly work.
Fortunately for me HL2 really does nothing to grab my attention. First my existing computer probably can't run it anyway becasue my graphics card isn't the greatest. But beyond that it's FPS and I've never managed to keep interest in an FPS longer then about 30mins. They bore me to tears.
However I do understand what you are pointing at. It's true linux isn't without it's quirks and it doesn't have the off the shelf hardware compatibility that windows does. That however is changing rapidly and I think this same conversation next year will be none existance. Even in my last month of linux experimentation I've thought a few times about going back to XP. Not becasue of games but just because there are a few things XP still does better. To that end though I'll have vmware up and running and run XP inside of it fully protected. Gives me all that I need out of XP.
i think within a few years linux will do to windows what firefox is doing to IE right now. it just needs time to gel together.
I couldn't ever stand to move back to windows, it's just very very uncomfortable for me. I am looking at a nice powerbook though
On the rpm front Suse would be about the closest to friendly for the general user as you can get. However Suse has major liscencing issues when it comes to including things with their base system such as codecs and video card support (in particular nvidia drivers). For that it means that (unlike Xandros) you can't install the system and have it up and running with full OpenGL and video playback. So for a new user you have to do a lot of frustrating configuration and Kernel Recompiles which is generally beyond your typical user especially a linux newb.
if linux was more unified from the start these problems wouldn exist because there would be a more focused development front. The other factor was hardware backing first and formost hardware and ultimately drivers were designed to get up and running in windows and then Linux coders made work arounds for it. That however is starting to change and more hardware is designed to work with linux out of the box.
Still 1 more year Xandros 3 or Suse 10 and I think linux will be where it needs to be to really start to hurt M$. As it is now linux is still for the majority in the hobby market. Business is starting to adapt it more and more (which is a good thing) but until software (games) start to base around OpenGL and move away from DirectX linux will never be for gaming.
It's that gaming element that will always keep Linux as the runner up to Windows.
Depends on the game. Lower end opengl games run faster in linux even if through wine then they do in windows. Generally games that require directX won't run through wine there is a wineX project that has been getting a lot of things to work but it's not free because they need to liscence certain libraries from M$.
Speed wise in theory linux should be faster if the program is running in a native state. However Directx would have to be emulated through winex since linux doesn't allow direct hardware rights in the same way windows does.
Umm so yeah if it runs in pure OpenGL linux should be faster.