Do You Ubuntu?

So, an acquaintance mentioned the Ubuntu Linux Operating System to me some time back (non-geeks, this is not a blog post for you!). I looked it over briefly but didn’t decide to install it. Then, I took a hard look at an old Windows 98 box I had and decided to give it new life.

I actually had two old Win98 boxes. I took the best parts from each and put them into one PC. So, two hard drives, 20gig +80gig, an Ethernet 100mb card, 384meg of RAM, an old Geforce 3, voodoo 4200 or some such… 800 mHz AMD CPU. It was a nice box in 2002-2003. Not enough juice to run any newer MS Windows versions though. I had deployed this box as an MP3 player attached to my whole-house stereo system. It was kind of okay for that but I just wasn’t using it much. Besides, I had gotten an iPod which I could use in its place.

So, many months ago, I decided to set it up as a Linux box. I wanted a LAMP box to play around with PHP on. First, I tried to use Debian. But I didn’t like it. Too command line oriented for me these days. Then I put Ubuntu server on it. Same problem. Instead, I finally settled on Ubuntu desktop and then added the necessary software to make it a LAMP box. This was the easiest route.

The desktop is really a nice alternative to Windows based systems. Out of the box, you get FireFox, OpenOffice.org, GIMP and many other Windows-like apps. I was already using many of these on Windows anyway, so it was an easy transition to use them on Ubuntu. I added my favorite, Opera web browser and many other programs, including a RAW converter for my photography work.

There are many great things about this platform. I can’t list them all here. So, don’t think this is a comprehesive description of all the wonderful things about Linux or Ubuntu.

One of the great things about Linux is the availability of so much free software. Ubuntu itself is a free download (simply burn the ISO to a CD and you are good to go). And all the apps I have on it currently are free also. OpenOffice is a great alternative to MS Office and less bloated. Almost every web site works with FireFox these days. There’s even a Quickbooks type application and an enterprise ERP… all free.

Another great thing is how software updates are handled. While MS is getting better with their Microsoft Update (which I don’t use since it require one become saddled with Windows Genuine Advantage and I object to that software to my very core), almost every Linux application can be updated via the automatic update features. An icon lights up to let you know you’ve got update available and tells you what they are when you click it. Very easy.

The last few days, I’ve been playing with a media manager called Amarok which even works with my iPod as well as MP3. It has vast lists of streaming radio stations and an interface to last.fm. It can even automatically download cover art.

The integration into my Windows network was very easy also. I can read and write to volumes I have mounted on my Ubuntu box. I’ve even installed support for read/write operations on NTFS. I can plug external USB drives in and access those as well and make them network accessible.

Next up, I’m working on a backup solution. I’ve tried many times to get a good backup solution for my Windows boxes. I think Linux is going to be a part of a very nice solution. I can burn a LiveCD with Linux on it and put a freeware ghosting program on it that will allow me to boot my Windows boxes on Linux and FTP the compressed disk images to my Ubuntu box’s USB attached storage. If a drive fails, I should be able to replace it and simply use my LiveCD to restore everything without having to reinstall Windows first. Sweeeeeet! I’ll let you all know how that works out as I’ll probably do a test run to upgrade a hard drive to larger capacity.

More Ubuntu stuff will be in future blog posts.