Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
30 days with ubuntu. - Part 1 of 4.
I actually remember my first encounter with linux: back in 1999, I asked Ryan if he could help me out with getting a linux distro to try out. I went to him for 2 reasons. One, I had no idea which one was good, and what I should even be looking for. Two, he had access to a pretty insane internet hookup in the Ga. State dorms. In any event, he recommended Slackware (Slackware 7, I believe), to which I got home and happily tried (and initially failed) getting set up. Only after a few long nights searching the net for driver and configuration was I able to get a nice desktop configured. I was ultimately beaten by linux and decided I’d come back someday … but not anytime soon.
A lot has changed in the last 8 or so years in the linux world, however. I have tried out a number of distros since then, notable Mandrake, a newer Slackware, Debian, SuSe, and most recently, Ubuntu. All of these have made tremendous strides to make the alternative OS setup pain-free (I’d venture to say it’s easier than OS X or Windows in many ways now, save for the partition questions that most people wouldn’t really know how to address).
The problem I found with Slackware was that it was basically to hardcore for even a hobby setup. I wasn’t a big fan of having to build, compile, and install every piece of software I wanted to use. Moreover, older versions didn’t even check for dependencies (so if I were installing a chat client that required some other piece of software to even run, Slackware would happily let me install the chat software and not tell me I needed some sort of decoder or other software to use the video software. A big pain for a newbie like myself.
Recently, Dell announced they were going to start selling consumer machines with Ubuntu pre-loaded. I wanted/needed a new laptop, but wasn’t really willing to break the bank for it. After piling on a few coupons, I was able to get a really good deal on the Inspiron 1505n laptop. So begins my journey.
Week One
Once the laptop showed up - it took about 2 weeks from ordering to it arriving on my doorstep - it was pretty easy to get things up and running. As a matter of fact, I’d say I was up and running within 10 minutes of opening the box. A Dell EULA popped up on the first run, and once I read that and clicked OK, Ubuntu booted up to an account setup page. I simply created an admin account, and I was good to go. Everything worked out of the box - even the things you normally fear might not work - wireless card, modem, things like that.
Once I connected to the wireless network in my apartment, I was presented with some security and software updates - maybe 50 or so megs of updates. I let the update manager do it’s thing and rebooted. Once I was back up, I started migrating over my contacts, bookmarks, documents, and some mp3s and movies. By default, Ubuntu ships with a pretty solid suite of tools to handle almost anything you can throw at it, so it wasn’t too much longer until I had all the data where I needed it to be.
Don’t get me wrong - some of the software that ships by default on Ubuntu (or any GNOME-based linux distro) isn’t as robust as software I use on my iMac. But I’ve found really solid equivalents to the stuff I use in an average week:
Mail/Address Book/iCal : Evolution
iTunes: Rhythmbox
Aperture: F-Spot (this is easily the biggest drop in quality software)
Camino: Firefox
Adium: Pidgin
TextMate: BlueFish (apt-get install bluefish)
Office: OpenOffice
For the most part, these apps fill my needs with no real drop-off other than the little niceties that go into OS X. I’ll go into detail more next time about how some of these default apps differ from the apps I’m used to.
After getting everything set up, it was time to customize my desktop a bit, and at least remove the default feel a little. I did the basics like change wallpaper and such, then it was off to gnome-look.org, one of the largest sites on the web for customizing the desktop environment for GNOME. I found a few neat themes that still stuck with the Ubuntu color scheme, and I played around for maybe an hour or so until I decided I was going to try out this Compiz stuff I hear so much about. For those who don’t know, Compiz (and another project called Beryl) are both open-source projects that focus on bringing the eye candy we’ve come to see in OS X and Vista to linux. Not only is this good for usability purposes, it’s also a good way to bring in new users (like myself) who are used to the eye candy on other platforms and wouldn’t mind the ability to replicate some of that. So, without much trouble at all, I got this set up. Here’s how:
First, I had to enable the ‘restriced’ NVIDIA drivers for my video card. NVIDIA’s drivers had to be reverse-engineered since they did not release them, and as such, they are not offered by default. You just have to check a box saying you are okay with any type of danger this might entail, reboot, and you’re back up and ready to go. I then simply opened up my terminal window and typed:
sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
and added the following repository to my sources list:
deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org feisty main
after updating my sources from the web (sudo apt-get update), I typed
sudo apt-get install beryl emerald-themes
to install beryl and the theme manager / themes. After a few minutes of downloading and configuring, I was ready to run the beryl manager. This can be done either by going to Applications-System Tools-Beryl Manager, or typing beryl-manager in the terminal. Your call. Then began the fun of setting up all the fancy window decorations that I wanted. I played around with a few themes, and finally settled on a theme similar to the one that shipped by default with Ubuntu, just with some more transparency and bigger borders.
I’m just to the point where I feel like the computer is “mine”, and have most everything set up the way I want, so I’ll go into more details next time about some of the major differences between GNOME and Mac OS X that have caused me headaches. I’ll also talk about how the Dell itself is holding up.
Posted on June 20th, 2007 | 7 Comments »
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