I'm getting to the limit for the day, in fact I may be past the limit. Maybe I'll take a bath and a nap and see how I feel after that.
In the process of setting up some of my favorite apps, I found a glitch. It's disappointing, but not disheartening.
In windows, I was able to set my home page on Firefox to open 8 different tabs at start up. These are all sites I use all the time. When I did that in Ubuntu, Firefox began to run so slow that it wasn't useable. I'd expect this functionality on Windows, I was hoping Linux was immune to it.
It took me a bit to figure out that it was the multiple tabs doing it and not just one site or the other. When I pruned it down to just 3 tabs, everything was fine.
So, I've had enough for today. I'll finish phase 3 later. Still, no real issues installing it or using it, just a glitch in Firefox.
Phase 2 - i made it harder than it needed to be
So here I am, all concerned that the Dell proprietary wireless LAN card is going to be a bear to install into Ubuntu. I went to the forums, followed the directions and splat. Nothing.
Then, a little box popped up and said "Updated drivers are available". And guess what? Bo-duh boom. Just like that, it's done. Working. In fact this is my first blog post on Linux.
Ok, so where's the challenge? Where's the hassle? Where's the headache? What am I missing here? This is almost too easy.
So, on to phase 3, installing programs I like. Among these are Digsby (an instant messenger), Picasa - a photo manager/editor from Google, and I don't know what else.
Then, a little box popped up and said "Updated drivers are available". And guess what? Bo-duh boom. Just like that, it's done. Working. In fact this is my first blog post on Linux.
Ok, so where's the challenge? Where's the hassle? Where's the headache? What am I missing here? This is almost too easy.
So, on to phase 3, installing programs I like. Among these are Digsby (an instant messenger), Picasa - a photo manager/editor from Google, and I don't know what else.
Ubuntu, Phase 1 - Wow that was painless!
I thought this first part would take all day, but it only took about 20 minutes!
I put the cd in the laptop and rebooted it. The Ubuntu install disk gave me the option to run it from the disk without making any changes to the computer. So I did. This let me test all the hardware to see where the holes were. As expected the wireless LAN didn't register, but everything else did. Flawlessly!
I tried all the programs I expected to use out of the box. Firefox, Gimp, Open Office. All worked without a hitch.
So now what? Install. There was alink right on the desktop that said "Install", so I did. I don't know if installing from within the OS was the best choice, but I did it anyway.
It offered to let me keep Windows on a partition, but since Windows was broken it needed to go anyway. So I closed my eyes, said a prayer and chose the full install option.
A I've installed and re-installed Windows on probably 100 different machines in the course of my career and personal life. Every time, regardless of version, it took a minimum of an hour. Most times it took 4-5. I think the average was about 4 hours. There were some that turned into 2 day affairs. I honestly believed I'd still be fighting the install of Linux at dinner time.
Here I am, 20 minutes later, and it's done. Totally done. (Except for the wireless - that's phase 2). It's up, it's running, it's happy, it's shiny, it's really cool looking! Ok, maybe that's over the top, but it didn't crash!
So, on to phase 2.
I put the cd in the laptop and rebooted it. The Ubuntu install disk gave me the option to run it from the disk without making any changes to the computer. So I did. This let me test all the hardware to see where the holes were. As expected the wireless LAN didn't register, but everything else did. Flawlessly!
I tried all the programs I expected to use out of the box. Firefox, Gimp, Open Office. All worked without a hitch.
So now what? Install. There was alink right on the desktop that said "Install", so I did. I don't know if installing from within the OS was the best choice, but I did it anyway.
It offered to let me keep Windows on a partition, but since Windows was broken it needed to go anyway. So I closed my eyes, said a prayer and chose the full install option.
A I've installed and re-installed Windows on probably 100 different machines in the course of my career and personal life. Every time, regardless of version, it took a minimum of an hour. Most times it took 4-5. I think the average was about 4 hours. There were some that turned into 2 day affairs. I honestly believed I'd still be fighting the install of Linux at dinner time.
Here I am, 20 minutes later, and it's done. Totally done. (Except for the wireless - that's phase 2). It's up, it's running, it's happy, it's shiny, it's really cool looking! Ok, maybe that's over the top, but it didn't crash!
So, on to phase 2.
My Journey into the Land of Ubuntu
It's been a while since I've had something to blog about. Well, that's not true, in reality it's been a while since I've really cared to blog. It's just hard to sit at my computer for more than a few minutes and by the time I've checked my email I'm pretty much done for the day.
Hopefully that will change and maybe I can be a little more productive and maybe even find a way to get a job.
My wife's old laptop is dying. I don't believe it's a hardware problem - other than the batteries, I really think it's suffering from what I call Bill's Bloat. It's a Dell Inspiron B120 running Windows XP. It's been working great, but over the last year or so, it seems to be getting slower and slower. Microsoft is still issuing security patches for it and we've noticed that every patch seems to take a little more life out of it. A check of the hard drive confirms that Windows has gone from using less than 1 Gig of hard drive space to around 3 Gig. The more stuff Windows has to sort through just to run itself, the slower it gets. Bill's Bloat.
A friend of mine recently switched his computer from Windows to Linux using the Ubuntu distribution. It sounds like he had great sucess and has no regrets. Rather than fix XP, which is no longer supported by Microsoft anyway and is set for the scrap heap with the release of Windows 7 later this year, I've decided to replace it with Linux.
I've had a little experience with this. I built a server for my church when we lived in Colorado. It was primarily a web server, which is a little different than an installation meant for desktop functions, but I'm fairly optimistic that I can pull this off. In both instances, the computer was/is a Dell. In that case I used Red Hat, in this case I'm using Ubuntu.
I chose Ubuntu for one primary reason: Dell is already offering it as an option on computers you order from them. I know that doesn't translate into good things for older computers from them, but it shows that Dell found enough support for their hardware to go with it. I've done some Googles on installing Ubuntu on Insprion B120s and except for a hiccup with the wireless LAN (which seems to be proprietary Dell hardware) most users have had great success.
So, I've transferred all the old stuff off the laptop, I've got the install disks that came with it in case we need to roll back, and I've got Ubuntu on a CD ready to go.
Wish me luck.
Hopefully that will change and maybe I can be a little more productive and maybe even find a way to get a job.
My wife's old laptop is dying. I don't believe it's a hardware problem - other than the batteries, I really think it's suffering from what I call Bill's Bloat. It's a Dell Inspiron B120 running Windows XP. It's been working great, but over the last year or so, it seems to be getting slower and slower. Microsoft is still issuing security patches for it and we've noticed that every patch seems to take a little more life out of it. A check of the hard drive confirms that Windows has gone from using less than 1 Gig of hard drive space to around 3 Gig. The more stuff Windows has to sort through just to run itself, the slower it gets. Bill's Bloat.
A friend of mine recently switched his computer from Windows to Linux using the Ubuntu distribution. It sounds like he had great sucess and has no regrets. Rather than fix XP, which is no longer supported by Microsoft anyway and is set for the scrap heap with the release of Windows 7 later this year, I've decided to replace it with Linux.
I've had a little experience with this. I built a server for my church when we lived in Colorado. It was primarily a web server, which is a little different than an installation meant for desktop functions, but I'm fairly optimistic that I can pull this off. In both instances, the computer was/is a Dell. In that case I used Red Hat, in this case I'm using Ubuntu.
I chose Ubuntu for one primary reason: Dell is already offering it as an option on computers you order from them. I know that doesn't translate into good things for older computers from them, but it shows that Dell found enough support for their hardware to go with it. I've done some Googles on installing Ubuntu on Insprion B120s and except for a hiccup with the wireless LAN (which seems to be proprietary Dell hardware) most users have had great success.
So, I've transferred all the old stuff off the laptop, I've got the install disks that came with it in case we need to roll back, and I've got Ubuntu on a CD ready to go.
Wish me luck.
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