Ubuntu Vs. Windows Vista

Wow. What can I say? I actually had a chance to work on Vista. Really! Since the hard disk in my work laptop died, I was given another portable pre-installed with Windows Vista.

What an experience. It's an HP dual core 1.9GHz 2G laptop with an nVidia graphics card. It should fly, right? Well, it flew about as gracefully as a turtle on it's back in the middle of the highway.

For comparison, I'm currently writing this blog from an older Gateway machine running on an AMD Turion 64 (single core), 1G of RAM with a Radeon XPress 200M. running (for now) Ubuntu 7.10. The machine was out of commission since I dropped an entire cup of coffee into the DVD drive. Thankfully, the folks at Farstar Networking in Alexandria did a fantastic job resurrecting it for a fraction of the cost I would have assumed it would have been.

However, back to Vista. For starters, after I had booted, the machine was already sucking up >700MB of ram. That leaves less than 1.3G to run my applications. That's not overly bad, since I've go to 2G on the HP, but my Gateway has only 1G. So, forget about running Vista on it. In Ubuntu, running the Gnome desktop with Compiz, Apache, MySQL, Firefox 2, Thunderbird and a system update, I'm not quite at the 475MB watermark.

I've heard a lot of folks complain about the performance of Vista. I finally had a chance to experience this first hand. Yuk! Is it ever SLOW. I could not even drag a window without the system studdering. Furthermore, I got kind notification from Norton Anti-Virus that my subscription was expired, and I should renew. What's that about my credit card number? I forgot what it's like to run an OS where you need an anti-virus. Let's not get into the endless array of continual popups.

Here's my first major gripe: No package manager. HP installed tons of crap on the laptop, including a (I would assume) redundant wireless connection manager, a trial version of Norton, tons of little application that are — supposedly — there to improve the user experience, and god knows what else. Time to clean the system!

I crack open the Add/Remove program, click on the first application, hold down control, and click on the next. Guess what? You can't! In Windows, you can only uninstall a single application at a time. Furthermore, it takes forever to remove the tiniest of application. Oh, and let's not get into the reboots. Remember, I'm cleaning this up because I need to get some work done. How much fun is it when all of a sudden, all your windows starts to close one after an other, and the machine reboots. Oh, I just love it when my operating system controls me. Sure! I love being a slave to the machine. Kiss your freedom goodbye.

On the other hand, I want to upgrade my Eee PC to Ubuntu 8.04. Unfortunately, I lacked disk space. No problem. I cracked open Synaptic package manager, selected a number of application for uninstallation, clicked Apply, and waited while the applications were removed. By the time the applications were removed, Windows Vista had finished booting, and was almost at the desktop. Of course, that was just one of the many reboots I had to do with Vista. None so far on the Eee PC!

Vista is slow. I asked one of my Windows Guru how I could turn off Areo. After digging around a bit, my guru showed me the option where I could chose the Windows Basic theme instead of Areo. What a difference this makes!!! I can move my Windows without feeling like the system is about to go into terminal shock. Here, on my Gateway, I've got Compiz working with the wobbly windows and all the fun graphic effects. It works great &mdash smooth as silk. Oh, and the Gateway is Windows Vista Capable. Not Ready, which means that Areo would not even work on the machine. My Eee PC is running eeeXubuntu with Compiz as well. It's pretty!

As a last point, one of my coworker asked about an 'upgrade path' from Vista Home to Vista Premium. He needed to upgrade Vista so he could run SQL Server Reporting Services (if I'm not mistaken). The software does not run on Windows Home. Not because Windows Home is incapable of running it, but because Microsoft thinks you should not. That is why I love free software. I come from a country that enjoys freedom of expression, movement, religion, etc. I cannot imagine myself relinquishing any of those fundamental freedoms for any price. It's the same thing with software.

I'm a free person. I refuse to pay for proprietary software that limits your freedom when there are perfectly good (better!) free solution out there.

In closing, my Eee PC quietly upgraded to Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04). One reboot was all it took. I then reinstalled whatever applications I had removed. No reboots. Everything works. Don't you wish it was the same in Windows? (To be fair, the wireless card did not come back up. But it took two minutes of googling, and found a simple solution)

While I'm writing this on my Windows-Vista-Incapable Gateway laptop running Ubuntu 7.10, I'm upgrading to Hardy Heron. Can you work on your machine while you are upgrading your Windows version?

If the answer is no, I would then ask you: why not?

Oh, and you paid how much for Windows Vista? And that does not even include an office suite???

<SHOCK>!!!!</SHOCK>

Enjoying the Asus Eee PC

Having just received my Eee PC, I'm still getting familliar with it's capabilities. The keyboard requires getting used to, but I'm getting better. As long as I don't have to use the right shift key too much, I can almost achieve the same typing speed as on a regular keyboard ;) All joking aside, once you get used to the keyboard, it's actually quite pleasant.

I got the 8G model, which means that I have a whooping 8 gigabytes of 'hard disk' space. While this is tiny compared to a regular hard-disk, which is usually over 100 gigabytes for a laptop. However, for my needs, I think that 8G, or even 4G should be enough. Since the Eee PC supports SD cards, I'm using a 4 gigabyte card for my /home partition (for Windows users, think My Documents).

The pre-installed operating system is a custom version of Xandros Linux (which is based in Ottawa). Though the default is fine for most people's need, I wanted something that gave me more -- so I installed eeeXubuntu. I removed the default Gnome games, Abiword and
Gnumeric to save space, and them promptly installed:

• OpenOffice.org
• Java 6 SDK
• Eclipse
• C/C++ compiler
• Free Pascal & Lazarus
• Anjuta IDE
• jEdit
• Frozen Bubble
• Cedega
• Firefox 3
• (and a few more which I'm sure I'm forgetting)

I've got ~640M of space left (which ought to be enough for anybody) on my system partition. Not too bad, considering I've got a practically complete portable development system.

One of my goals is to get Morrowind working with Cedega. So far, no joy, but I'm not about to give up. I know some folks got it working, so I'm sure I can as well.

If you are going to install eeeXubuntu or Ubuntu, be aware of the Eee Wiki. One of the coolest trick I found is how to enable the ALT+F11 key to make a window take the full screen. That really takes advantage of the 800x640 screen resolution. There are many more cool tricks on the page. Check it out!

Software for Windows seems to take up much more room than software for Linux. If anyone plans to run Windows on the Eee PC, I would like to recommend they consider using Google Docs. It is a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package that runs in a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox. Using Google Docs does not require you to install and special software. As long as you are connected to the Internet, you can use it. Futhermore, Google Gears should eventually allow you to run online application offline.

Actually, I'm using Google Docs one my Eee PC right now to author this article. So far, the Eee PC turns out to be a fun, yet useful machine. My wife is starting to strongly hint that I'm spending too much time on it. Oups! I think I should wrap up this article, and spend some quality time with her! See ya!

(Hum... I'm a bit disappointed with the Google Docs' HTML exporter. I wish it did XHTML)

Is Linux Like Windows?

This is a follow-up to the article on 'What is Linux?'
I'll cut to the chase, and answer right away - no.
It is possible to set up Linux so that it looks very much like Windows, but under the hood, it is not Windows. We have to understand that Linux is very flexible and customizable. Someone with some technical knowledge, time and determination can install a Linux system exactly the way he or she would like. Those who are interested in truly learning Linux from the ground up can take a look at Gentoo or Linux From Scratch. This can be a great technical learning experience, but it is very technical.
If you would like a gentler introduction to Linux, I would heartily recommend Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is a free Linux distribution (distro amongst the initiate). A Linux distribution is a full-fledged, pre-packaged collection of software. Distros makes it easy and convenient to install and use the GNU/Linux operating system. Currently, Ubuntu is one of the most popular distributions due to its ease of use, stability and continued support. It is not the only popular distribution. If you are interested, you can also visit and/or try any of the following:

• Debian
• Fedora
• OpenSUSE
• Vector Linux

This is only a sample of some of the many distributions available. All of the above can be installed with minimal difficulty.
However, as mentioned above, Linux is not the same as Windows. It does not strive to be a carbon-copy of Windows, but an operating system that stands on its own merits.
Let's take a look at the important differences you will encounter between Linux & Windows.

No C:\ Drive
Yes. That's right. There is no A: drive, no C: drive and your DVD-ROM is not your D: drive. Your 'C:' drive is called the 'root directory.' Everything starts from the root directory. Also, where Windows uses the backslash (\) Linux uses the forward slash (/).
Here's a little cheat-sheet to help you get started:

C: drive	/
My Documents	/home/<<your name>>/Documents
Desktop	/home/<<your name>>/Desktop
Settings	/home/<<your name>>/
CD-ROM / DVD-ROM	/media/cdrom
USB Flash Drive	/media/<<drive name>>

Mac OS X users may recognize the above structure. Just replace /home/ by /Users/ and /media/ by /Volumes/.

Linux does not use file extensions
In Windows, a file ending with .doc is assumed to be a Word document and a file ending with .exe is an executable. In Linux, the extensions are usually meaningless, especially for executable files. So, firefox.exe becomes firefox, oowriter.exe becomes oowriter, and so on.

Files are case sensitive
In Windows, there can be only one file called letter.odt. It can be called letter.odt or LETTER.ODT, but it will be the same file.
In Linux, letter.odt, Letter.odt and LETTER.ODT are three different files. Furthermore, be aware that if you are asked to enter a command, it may be case sensitive.

No Viruses
Yes, you did read that correctly. There are no viruses in the wild for Linux. This means that you do not need an anti-virus. Should your friend or coworker kindly send you an email virus, you are immune. No need for McAfee or Norton.
I'm not saying that Linux will never have viruses, but I strongly doubt that it will develop the rich virus ecosystem that is present on Windows.

Windows Applications do not work on Linux
Many Windows applications have their equivalent in the Linux world. Actually, many of the applications used in the Linux world are becoming available in the Windows world as well.
Another cheat-sheet to get you started (free of charge!):

Microsoft Office	OpenOffice.org
Internet Explorer	Firefox or Iceweasel
Outlook	Evolution
Outlook Express	Thunderbird
Adobe Photoshop	The GIMP

By the by, most of these programs are available for Windows if you would like to give them a spin.

No need to download programs
In the Windows world, to install an application like WinZip, it is necessary to go to the WinZip.com website, download the setup executable, run the installation program and then we can use the program.
In most distributions, there is a 'package manager' that does the work for you. In Ubuntu, the Add/Remove Program takes care of everything for you. Just select the program(s) you would like, click Install, and it's done. That's right -- no need to run around the web, manually download setup programs and doing the installation yourself.


It's Secure
Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Vista are starting to take security seriously. However, Linux has been written with security from the very beginning. This means that you don't immediately have access to every component of your system by default. Linux may refuse to show you a file or run a program. This is for security reasons.
Should you need access to a secure resource, you may be prompted for your password or the 'root' password. Be aware that once you enter the root password, you have complete control over your system. If you want to, you can render your system complete unusable. Note that you can do the same with Windows, except that Windows will not prompt you for your password.

It's Free
Free as in free beer. Yes, you can get something for (nearly) nothing. I add nearly because you need an Internet connection, and maybe a blank CD. Also, some of your time may be required.
Linux is also free as in free speech, and that's the part that is truly valuable for me. Windows is controlled by Microsoft — not by me. Mac OS X is controlled by Apple — not by me. Linux is controlled by — me! — and you!
That's freedom!
However, I know that too much freedom can be intimidating. That's where distros come in handy. They pick the most common option, and pre-package everything for you so that you get up and running quickly. However, once you get the hang of your environment, you can start tweaking stuff, and customizing stuff.

So, how does one get started with Linux? Well, stick along, and in a later post, I would like to show you how you can try Linux risk free!

In the mean time, you are welcome to continue your research. I would recommend Wikipedia as a great place to start. If you can, talk to other Linux users, and find out what they have to say. I personally think it's a great operating system, and I'm excited that you are interested in knowing more.

— and no, I don't make money selling Linux. This is a labour of passion and love.