Just for giggles, I resized one of the partitions on my hard drive yesterday morning and decided to install Ubuntu linux on it. I don't have a lot of motivation to be fighting with my computer on a daily basis to get it set up for mundane tasks like playing videos and MP3s, so I haven't run linux in 4 or 5 years. I mean, let's face it, even for geeks, linux is a bear to get set up properly.
I figured I'd just start the install and work on it over the course of a day or two to get everything configured right.
When it popped up the screen asking what partition I wanted to install to, I was pleasantly suprised to see a "guided install" entry that kept the user from having to type things like "makepar /dev/sba1" and "setpar /dev/sba1 ext3" as many of the old partitioning programs did.
It asked me a handful of easy-to-answer questions (such as: "The system clock says it's 11:15. Is this GMT or is it set to your local time zone?" and "What is your desired screen resolution?").
Then, it installed itself.
No, really.
Everything.
It set up my network... automatically. My mouse and keyboard... automatically. My video card and sound card... automatically.
I couldn't believe it. I left for work while it was installing, and when I came back there was a nice graphical logon screen, which took me to a fresh Xwindows installation, with the typical-linux very complete suite of applications.
But the best part was, everything worked. There was no recompiling of the kernel to provide sound card support. No editing of the xwin.conf file to provide video card settings. No typing of bizarre foreign phrases like "mount /dev/hdc -t iso9660 -r /media/cdrom" to make your CD drive show up. Is that stuff all doable? Sure, I ran linux for years. But this is so much better.
It's still not a newbie's operating system. I still had to muck about in my xwindows config file to get my forward and back buttons on the mouse to work. Installation of new software still isn't a point-and-click process. And with all of the software that it comes with, you have to go get codecs for MP3s (?!?) and any video files you may wish to play.
I just couldn't believe how far it has come. so, if anyone is considering getting their feet wet with linux - or just doesn't have the time to do hand-to-hand combat with their computer for a week to get it running - Ubuntu sure makes it easy.
I figured I'd just start the install and work on it over the course of a day or two to get everything configured right.
When it popped up the screen asking what partition I wanted to install to, I was pleasantly suprised to see a "guided install" entry that kept the user from having to type things like "makepar /dev/sba1" and "setpar /dev/sba1 ext3" as many of the old partitioning programs did.
It asked me a handful of easy-to-answer questions (such as: "The system clock says it's 11:15. Is this GMT or is it set to your local time zone?" and "What is your desired screen resolution?").
Then, it installed itself.
No, really.
Everything.
It set up my network... automatically. My mouse and keyboard... automatically. My video card and sound card... automatically.
I couldn't believe it. I left for work while it was installing, and when I came back there was a nice graphical logon screen, which took me to a fresh Xwindows installation, with the typical-linux very complete suite of applications.
But the best part was, everything worked. There was no recompiling of the kernel to provide sound card support. No editing of the xwin.conf file to provide video card settings. No typing of bizarre foreign phrases like "mount /dev/hdc -t iso9660 -r /media/cdrom" to make your CD drive show up. Is that stuff all doable? Sure, I ran linux for years. But this is so much better.
It's still not a newbie's operating system. I still had to muck about in my xwindows config file to get my forward and back buttons on the mouse to work. Installation of new software still isn't a point-and-click process. And with all of the software that it comes with, you have to go get codecs for MP3s (?!?) and any video files you may wish to play.
I just couldn't believe how far it has come. so, if anyone is considering getting their feet wet with linux - or just doesn't have the time to do hand-to-hand combat with their computer for a week to get it running - Ubuntu sure makes it easy.
