Getting started with linux (ubuntu edition)

Hey everybody, I haven’t said anything recently.

Now I am here to talk about linux, now that I recently installed it onto an old laptop of mine.

You may think that when you find an old laptop in the spare room that it is no good for anything except spare parts or a big paper weight. But this is not the case, with a very old laptop i.e. not very good specification, you can still have a very good running operating system.

Note: I am going to be presuming that you are the administrator of the computer, otherwise you will not be able to do this (or at least not easily)

I was using  an old laptop running Windows XP, with 10Gb HDD, 312Mb RAM and a 800Mhz processor (though you don’t even need this, some linux distros will run on systems with as little as 32Mb RAM). If you want to run a dual boot system, you will first of all have to partition the hard drive and create a new volume

http://maxeasyguide.blogspot.com/2008/05/b-shrink-vista-partition-for-winxp.html

that is a good website to look at for finding this out, as it has pictures to make sure you are doing the right thing.

However I did a clean install, so basically I just put in the disc and restarted the laptop. Then it goes to the ubuntu CD, I suggest you first try it on the CD without installing, as it lets you get a feel for the system, as you may want a different distribution of linux, though ubuntu is basically the most common at the moment.

Then when it asks the place you want to save it, if you have a dual boot, click the part where you want to save it (the partition you made earlier if dual booting). If not dual booting, like me, just click underneath this where it says whole disk.

Btw, I forgot to say if when you restarted the computer it didnt go into the ubuntu screen you will have to change your BIOS (Basic input/output system) by starting the computer and clicking F10 (sometimes F2, though it often says when starting the computer) then go into the Boot tab at the top and change it so that it boots a CD.

So you are now installing it (times will change depending on the computer you are using, the computer I was using took around 45 minutes to completely install). I would just like to take a couple of minutes to talk about the different Desktop Environments, often referred to a DEs. The base DE for ubuntu if gnome, as it is most. And this comes with the added effect in that it is very useful and looks quite good. Though if you want it to look the best, then the best DE is KDE, and for this you will need to change to kubuntu (KDE ubuntu), don’t worry you won’t need to do a complete clean install for this, there are different things you can do for this, so that you can decide at start up (look at this for help http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9369 ). KDE is more similar looking to Windows, and there seems more graphical needy things on it, so maybe not the best DE for an old laptop. The only thing that Windows users find strange at the start is that you use a single click instead of single click in KDE, unlike the others.

Gnome is the base DE for ubuntu, as I already told you, and it looks very nice, and is very customisable (like all linux distros and DEs). I have semi-transparent tool bars, and docks (similar to mac OS X), and the graphics card in the laptop is practically non-existant (my way of saying really, really poor), though with a better graphics card you can have a cube appear which you can move around, as it has your desktops on (which looks as good as vistas 3D page tabbing. The other DE is xfce (xubuntu), which was more aimed at developers, and this can run easily on very, very old computers, as it uses up the least memory and graphics, though it too can have very graphical, good looking applications. (The only real difference I find between xubuntu and ubuntu, the 2 I have used the most, is that xubuntu also has a good file manager. The easiest way I think too change to xubuntu from ubuntu, I found was to open a terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal) which is a command line interface, for linux, from here type

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

and hit enter, then it goes down to another line which asks if you want to proceed (or something along those lines), just type y (for yes) and hit enter again. This will then keep showing the code all the way down while doing it (you can also change the desktop via synaptics, like in the link above, I just thought I would try and convert some of the non- command line users). This doesn’t take all that long, and only took my laptop between 5 and 10 mins. then just restart and you should start with a new desktop, which you can then choose which type of DE you want to use, then log in. (I forgot to say you may also be able to change the desktops in Add/remove programs – a great new feature to ubuntu)

Now that you have ubuntu, and the DE that you want, it is time to change some of your preferences, and suit it to your look and feel.

You can click on toolbars and change their look (for instance making them part-transparent by clicking solid colour, then sliding the bar, to choose how transparent/solid you want it to look). Plus you can have multiple desktops (you have 2 by default). To change between these you can either hold CTRL + ALT + left or right, up or down (depending on how you have them set out). You can also add more of these in preferences. You can have basically as many as you need. Though I warn you that these will slow down you computer, I find on my old laptop that 4 made the computer run generally slow, so I have 3. This makes it better than windows, as you dont have to have everything on the same page, with loads of different programs minimised, and so you can easily see everything. And you can scroll pages and do other things to pages in the background, unlike Windows, and more like Mac.

Now you will probably want to get onto the internet. If you are working with cables, then it is easy, though working wirelessly isnt as easy (though ubuntu has probably the best wireless interface of any linux distro). You need to go to System -> Preferences -> Hardware Drivers to check the wireless card drivers, these are most probly right, unless you are using a very new computer. Then you need to go to System -> Administration -> Network configuration. From here you need to go to wireless and click Add (this isnt like Windows, so it won’t just show up all the available networks) you need to put in the wireless network name (easiest to find if you have actually used windows, as it tells you the whole name i.e. CampusNet) note: linux is case sensitive, so if it capital you MUST write it in capital. Then the SSID which in my case, and perhaps your, was just the same. Then put in any security key if you have one (you really should, its stupid not to), then click OK. Now it should just connect, and then it should show on one of the toolbars a wireless card signal strength meter. Now you should be connected, and be able to find out practically anything you want about ubuntu, or anything else for that matter.

There are other things that make it better than Windows, and I would most certainly say that linux is better than XP, perhaps even Vista, and another thing about linux is that you have a massive amount of choice with linux. There is ubuntu, slackware, gentoo, there are hundreds of different distros. And you can farely easily give all of them a try. You can even make your own distro, with LSF, Linux From Scratch (http://www.linuxfromscratch.org)

~ by lavamunky on 14/12/2008.