August Under Ubuntu

September 1, 2008 Mark Williams 13 comments

(Note: force a page reload to see September’s banner. Shift-F5 in Windows, Shift-CTRL-R in Linux)

Playing as I prepare this post: In Rainbows – Radiohead

How Did it Go?
Okay, so I’ve made it through August using only Ubuntu Linux 8.0.4 (Hardy Heron). I’ve done everything I could do in Windows — edit audio and video clips, prepare documents, browse the Web, post to my blog, burn data DVD’s and CD’s, burn an audio CD, and so on.

Scanner Woes
The only holdout so far is my flatbed scanner. When I was running Ubuntu on my “extra” PC, it worked out great. About two weeks into the project, I installed Ubuntu on my main PC to give the OS exactly the same hardware I had been using in Windows. It seemed only fair when comparing performance.

As you will see in the following example, it’s a good thing my scanner isn’t a vital tool.

Shannon wanted me to scan in an old picture of her and her friend Mischelle. Whereas the first computer had delivered a flawless scan of my painting of two hands, no matter what I tried I got nothing near a clean scan any higher than 200 dpi (which results in digital versions smaller than actual size, in regards to printing). I’ve scoured the Web and started my own thread on the Ubuntu forums, and still have no solution. I think it’s related to the 32-bit vs. the 64-bit version of the operating system (the newer computer running the latter).

Hardy Hard Drives
I have three hard drives in my main PC: a 40GB for the operating system, a 120GB for working files, and a 200GB mostly for backup. All are formatted NTFS (the native file system for Windows NT all the way to Windows 2003 Server). I resized my Windows XP Professional partition to leave room for 16GB for a Linux ext3 partition and a 2GB Linux swap file partition — plenty of room for Ubuntu to run around and play. Ubuntu had no problems using all the drives and moving between them was seamless in the included file manager. Unlike the first time I played with Slackware Linux back in 1996, the operating system recognized them automatically.

Sound
Worth noting is that on my main PC I had no problems at all with different media applications associating themselves with different sound cards.

Backup
Although there was a File Backup Manager included, I wanted something more like the very simple yet powerful SyncToy, provided for free but unsupported by Microsoft. Grsync provides identical functionality in just a slightly less user-friendly interface (albeit with much greater control and more options).

Printer
The thing that surprised me was the printer support. HP provides the excellent HP Linux Imaging and Printing (HPLIP) that rivals the printer management software for Windows, and with it I quickly added my networked printer to Ubuntu. The results were impeccable.

Video Drivers Great Only for 2D Use
Those hoping to use their existing video card for 3D gaming or other 3D applications should not get their hopes up with Linux. Some of the impressive and freely available 3D shooter games look great in the screenshots online, but I never got any of them to work because there is poor Linux driver support for my ATI video card. I spent quite a bit of time trying various things suggested on the forums, not because I’m a big-time gamer, but because I wanted to try everything the average user might on a home PC. Still, I never got anything better than a complete PC freeze when trying to run Alien Arena (based on Quake 2, runs wonderfully on this PC in Windows).

Cons Not All That Bad (But Khan’s Evil)
The good news for me is that the two things I use the least — my flatbed scanner and games — are the only two things that gave me problems. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used the scanner in the past three years, so it’s not a deal breaker. Could I go out and buy a scanner and a video card that are known to work perfectly with Linux? Sure. Will I? Probably not.

To Do
I still have not set up the Ubuntu system to backup Shannon’s vital folders from her laptop. There is a way to share directories between Windows and Linux, but I have not tried that quite yet. Update: I set up the file sharing and installed Synctoy on her laptop so that she can back up the files herself. Easy stuff.

I’m Keeping Him
I plan to continue using Ubuntu as my operating system at home. I figure it took me years to learn Windows as well as I know it, and that was back when I had few distractions outside my day job. Ubuntu deserves more than a month for me to become more familiar with it (although it’s so Windows-like that I doubt most folks would have much trouble). I didn’t learn Windows overnight, so it’s only fair to give Ubuntu a little more time.

Related Reading:
Sit, Ubuntu, Sit
Ubuntu After One Week

Technology none

Comments

Written by Pops on September 1, 2008.

OK, so Ubu works almost as well as Windows. Am I missing something?

Good dog.
Written by Mark on September 1, 2008.

Pops – While that might be a fair assessment, you wouldn’t want to go posting that on ubuntuforums.org, lest ye want to be walkin’ the plank.

I think “almost as good” doesn’t quite nail it, though. Maybe, “almost as good for the average consumer.”

Overall, however, I spent much more time setting up my Windows XP system from scratch than I did when setting up Ubuntu. Finding all the neat freeware Windows programs requires going to lots of different Web sites, while the Synaptic Package Manager makes adding useful (and 100% free) software simple and completely centralized. Plus, many of the programs I use are available for Windows XP and Ubuntu, so those transitions have been seamless.
Written by Pops on September 1, 2008.

Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place? Now I understand. I prefer to leave well enough alone.

Arf.
Written by Dave on September 2, 2008.

Mark,
Have you tried running Windows in a VM under Ubuntu?
Check out VirtualBox OSE, which somehow installed itself automatically on my Ubuntu in work, but not yet at home.
Maybe you can VM your Windows, and use the scanner through that!

I can’t play with that at work as my Ubuntu runs in a VM under Vista already.

I have to say though, Ubuntu is a great OS. Lots of thought went into it.

BTW, did you get Cube to work yet???
Written by Anna on September 2, 2008.

OK, this is all nonsense to me…I love Mac. :)
Written by Simon on September 2, 2008.

Well, you’ve got me convinced. But I’m still getting a Mac for my next purchase. Whenever that may be.

And that was a pretty bad scan of the two friends up there. (I tried to click on the X in the screen shot of the file browser to close the picture. I feel shame.)
Written by Charles on September 2, 2008.

%*)@!)&^^Q))*^%Q#@^

This is how my mind perceives the content of your post.

I would liken it to how the adults sound on “Peanuts.”
Written by Charles on September 2, 2008.

Is the interest because the Ubuntu software is free? Does it have the same functionality as PowerPoint, Excel, etc.?

I’m still trying to find the rationale behind the experiment. Maybe it’s anti-Gates driven?

WTF?
Written by Mark on September 2, 2008.

Special lunch hour comment reply:

Dave – I haven’t tried running Windows in a VM, because my goal was to see if I could run entirely Windows-free. I did run the Cube on the first Ubuntu box, and it worked great. It’s more eye candy than anything else, but very slick.

Anna, Pops, Charles – A lot of the impetus for my doing this is just because I enjoy tinkering with computers and hadn’t done it in a long time. Every couple of years I give Linux another go because I like playing with shiny new toys without having to buy them, and this was one of those years. This time I just happened to blog about it, much to the chagrin of some readers.

I also wanted to know whether I could go Microsoft-free. Windows XP is stable and works great for me, but one day MS will drop it like a ton of hot lead and we’ll be forced to shell out money to upgrade all our PC’s (”we” being home users and businesses) to something that will be very buggy at first and, once it’s really nice and smooth and we all have computers than run it quickly, MS will make us buy the next new thing.

Unless we have an alternative.

Charles – Powerpoint and Excel? The increasingly popular OpenOffice Suite is available for Linux and has applications that do all that, including opening existing Word and Excel files (not sure about PowerPoint). It’s free, too, and yes, that helps the cause.

Ubuntu is just one of many “flavors” of Linux, which has been around since about 1991 when Linus Torvalds released Linux to the open source community. Linux has quite the following on servers in the US, and in all aspects of computing in the global market. It’s still fairly hard to find on the corporate desktop, but in the past year at least one of our customers asked my advice in setting up their Linux desktop machines for a remote desktop connection to their Windows terminal servers. It can save businesses TONS of money in upfront costs (because they can put it on 10 or 1000 desktops for the same low price of nothing), and there are businesses making money providing Linux support.

Simon – I’m glad you’re just geeky enough to understand why I might do this, and I respect your desire to go to Mac. Their OS is Unix-based now and is very similar to Linux, so you won’t be all that far outside the Ubuntu camp, anyway. I would buy a Mac right now if I had the cash and the items above it on my wish list were checked off.
Written by Dave on September 2, 2008.

Charles,

The same version of OpenOffice is available for Windows PC’s! And it’s FREE!

(gives you a free version of software like MS Word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint, and MS Outlook (Email) and a Database program.)
Written by Shan on September 2, 2008.

Honey, you know I don’t read your posts about this kind of stuff b/c it bores me, but I still love you. And I don’t see why you should have to explain yourself – WTF??? I think it’s cool that you try new stuff to broaden your horizon (I just wish some of that stuff weren’t so time consuming)!
Written by Anna on September 3, 2008.

I like Shannon’s reply….and Mark, you don’t need to explain anything for me…my husband is the same way with anything Mac……I totally get it…I just can’t make myself read about it!
Written by Charles on September 4, 2008.

For the record, this PC runs on Vista and I have been running the OpenOffice application. It’s a headache to get it to open, and Vista doesn’t really give you a good way to show the icons. It also has some type of spyware program attached to it that causes me to have to OK the scan finding almost every time I use the computer.

It doesn’t have all of the same functionality, and there have been times when I have had Word and other documents that were formatted end up being all run together when opended in OpenOffice.

It’s just annoying enough to make me seriously consider spending the $250.00, plus I miss having Outlook.

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