Linux Desktop

"Provided you are lucky and don't have to rebuild the grub to make the boot options menu appear like i did (in case you want dual boot), there is a 99% percent chance that you will install it in about 15 minutes in total likeness of Windows installation. Then you can do too a bit of desktop customization."



We all have to thank the webmaster or the succession of webmasters at infoworld.com for the continuity of their database. After all, it has now proven its usefulness. I found what i was looking for. The prophetic words of Torvalds that never became reality. Except for some. I never knew until today what Torvalds said 8-9 years ago, that "he thinks Linux on the desktop is at least five years, maybe 10 years, away".

But since last year's spring i had it with Windows. It couldn't be contained anymore in a gigantic 22 GB partition. It wanted to download SP1 after it already had all the updates overfilling the partition that still had some 2 GB free space. I lost a long email i was writing for a couple of hours because i didn't hit in time the postpone updates button or whatever it's called for the 5th time in a raw while i was writing it.

Don't get me wrong. I have enough space on my hard drive, in fact close to TB. But as somebody who wrote his first programs in 64 KB total memory for Z80 processors, this is in the area of insanely big.

I read so many times in zdnet.com comparison articles between Windows and many flavors on Linux that i thought i was already familiar with and it's going to be piece of cake, i will install it in no time and go with it and some day i'll even have the opportunity to start learning scripting languages for Linux. So i ordered an Ubuntu CD from an online store and installed it as a second boot while keeping Windows. For non IT professionals that means there is a menu at boot time that lets you choose between the two.

But i ran into first trouble right away, the menu wasn't showing at the beginning the same as it does now with Fedora because the video mode on the monitor was not compatible with what grub was doing at boot time, in absentia of a video driver. (A minor bug that was preventing for showing the dual boot menu. And i lost, i don't know, a half day or more trying to fix it with help from the forums, i had to learn the different Linux directories, can't remember exactly what i've done but in Fedora now i go to etc/default/grub and add a line GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console, then rebuild the grub with the command $ grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg then the menu shows on the screen).

But even if the menu is not showing on the screen, in 5 seconds it picks the default option which is booting Linux. So you don't have dual boot anymore and loose 5 seconds boot time but your computer will still boot.)

Why multiple boot? I once said in a different post on this blog about the advantages of partitioning and multiple boot. You can even have dual Windows boot with the same version of Windows, provided you keep your data like email and documents on different partitions separate from Windows. You can mess up Windows how much you want and you will after installing and uninstalling a number of applications no matter what. Then you can move all your data on a different data partition and go and install a fresh Windows of the same version and all your applications on the other specially reserved partition and point all your apps's storing options to the data on the data partition, like by example the store folder in Live Mail and voila! In no time you're back in business... Windows at the second installation on a different partition will even build automatically a menu for you like Linux does at install letting you choose between the two so you can have a smooth transition... No time meaning a busy afternoon or two... And having to learn the very basics of partitioning and using the option at installation which is half hour learning time for the daring non IT professional...

With dual Linux-Windows you cannot share your email but you can everything else. I will write about later when writing about the plethora of free, verified applications on Linux.

Then the partitioning on Linux. I will pass over it because partitioning as i came to realize lately it's more an art then an exact science. There are so many types and possible combinations that you will never finish optimizing your computer for not so much gain.

Right now i'm using 128 MB for boot, 1024 for swap, 1024 for tmp, 4086 var, 8092 root and the rest untill 18 GB (I had at the beginning of the hard drive two partitions for operating systems, one of 22 with Windows now and one of 18 for the second OS, at first they were 20/20 but i gave it more room for Windows thinking i will get away before if overfilled again) for home.

So i ended up with about 4 GB free out of the 18 for the home partition for data and the other partitions are 1/10 to half occupied and lots of room for years of updates and applications as opposed to Windows that overfilled a 22 GB partition in one year and a half with the automatic updates option always on and with most basic applications.

But Fedora and Ubuntu give you the option of automatically installing themselves alongside Windows or alone with nothing much to do except choosing the locales, a root password, and create a (few) user profile(s), very much like Windows.

(I forgot to tell why i ended up with Fedora over Ubuntu. Out of paranoia. And because i couldn't learn to profile a new application with AppArmor, the security application that comes with Ubuntu. Cause this is what you have to do. In Fedora, my current understanding is that Selinux that is enabled here by default, takes care of newly installed applications automatically. And then out of paranoia too i learned a bit of IP tables. But there is a firewall program in Fedora which is enabled by default.)

Provided you are lucky and don't have to rebuild the grub to make the boot options menu appear like i did (in case you want dual boot), there is a 99% percent chance that you will install it in about 15 minutes in total likeness of Windows installation. Then you can do too a bit of desktop customization.

Then again out of paranoia, i chose to go withe the XFCE spin of Fedora because gnome3 has some social networking built in and inseparable from its windows manager. After, i furtherly downgraded it by uninstalling a list of softwares mostly social networking that have minds of their own and want to connect by themselves to the internet. I don't understand why or maybe i do but now i do everything i need with the browser (Firefox) and this way i have only one security nightmare that i chose not to think about anymore. They might be still others i'm not aware of. After all most applications nowadays jump on the internet without asking permission or even notifying you.

A major problem with Linux in the past was the video drivers. On a 7 years old computer with no graphics card like mine, if i choose to go with the built in quasi universal Nouveau driver (built by reverse engineering of the nVidia drivers as nVidia doesn't give away the source code for them), i loose about 30 percent of performance over downloading and installing manually the nVidia driver. Because it's proprietary and cannot be distributed by Red Hat Linux. With Ubuntu things are smoother because it automatically installs the appropriate driver that chooses itself from its enabled repositories, i think. So with Fedora you can choose again to do nothing about it if you are not into gaming or other heavy graphics. But then if you are, things can get a bit complicated but there's help on forums.

Now let's talk a bit about the benefits. A much leaner OS. Overall it feels about twice faster as i can say after the last few year of heavy using for storing photographs and blogging and social networking. (Never had problems with security but i have two custom firewalls, one on the DSL gateway and one on Linux and Selinux enabled by default on Linux. But never had any known ones on a Windows XP computer with no other security than the the gateway's firewall for years (now i have Security Essentials on that one too)).

Free Office-like application - LibreOffice.

Free Photoshop-like application - Gimp (not that i use it, don't have it installed).

Free AutoCad-like application (currently don't use it, don't have it installed).

And every major application for Windows you can think of. And more. Available from Fedora repositories and installable with a click or a command after a secure download.

And you can share your data with Windows since all above apps can import/export data from and to Windows partitions and formats if you choose so.

So  you still think Torvalds was wrong?

http://fedoraproject.org

http://www.ubuntu.com

http://www.debian.org